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Earthlink Invests In Broadband Over Power Lines
prostoalex writes "Earthlink dedicated $500,000 to delivering broadband connections over power lines by launching a test drive of the technology with Progress Energy in North Carolina. 500 homes involved in the projects can sign up for promotional pricing of $20/month, which after 3 months will be changed to $50/month. No word on bandwidth provided, but Ambient Corp., which provides technology for the project and accpeted EarthLink investment, claims data rates exceeding 10 Mpbs."
the FCC will have to mandate retrofiting the powerlines with some sort of sheilding.
by the time this gets to most people, it will cost 70 bucks a month I bet.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I add "...to Provider's nearest host".
In my town great most providers advertise like this. They just install ethernet lines between people's houses. And then say, 500 customers, each on 10 mbit line are all plugged into one 1mbit line connecting with the rest of the world.
Yeah, transfers like 1KB/s are quite common.
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Well here we go again, the same old argument : ham is old, Innurnet is shiny and better, so screw the hams. I'll sum up the arguments why hams should have their bands untouched by BPL (or any other interference for that matter):
/. and I don't want to bore you all.
- Hams are useful to the community : they do aviation security radio watches, can relay messages from people at sea, and are often the last communication medium when all else fail. You don't believe me and that's normal, because it's never happened to you (or me, I'm too young). But I bet resistant fighters during WW2 really did appreciate, for example.
- There are a lot of great technical advances that were made by hams, playing and experimenting on their allocated bands. To deny them the bands just so you can d/l pr0n in the middle of Alabama means to deprive the entire scientific and technical community of these discoveries.
- Hams have been using their slices of the spectrum for decades, and had to work and pay for the privilege. In short, if nothing else, I'll say we were here first, and so we do have some rights in the matter.
There are many other reasons why ham bands should be left alone, but this is
73 de F8EJF
With one exception I have no problem with this post. In the past other hobbies and entire industries have fallen to "progress", and it will happen in the future.
However, in the case of hurricanes, earthquakes, etc a major form of communication is amateur radio. If those airwaves are messed up by interference, we lose that blessing.
I'd say the responsibility belongs with those bringing about Internet over powerlines to come up with a solution to stepping on so many frequencies.
A solution may not be cheap or easy, but it is absolutely necessary if they want to continue.
About how it has already caused 2 machines to become molten bricks of plastic. I know because I had to talk to one of the 2 customers.
Replacement list:
1. Wooden desk (burned)
2. Computer/Monitor (charred)
3. Everything that was in their office. (toasted)
The project will be beta for a long time. They just did all this because they wanted to get people talking and maybe buying stocks (which I have too much of). Why am I posting this...because when people from india show up around my cube all of a sudden, I know I am on the endangered outsource to do list.
Before they get to US airspace (12 miles) they'll be able to communicate via VHF (which has a range of 134 miles from 40k feet up).
It's a shame that this is being done with Earthlink, the company that cranks DSL and cable "inlimited users" news feed connection down to next to nothing if you dare use more that 1 gigabyte in a month.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
There are several factors that the BPL industry isn't mentioning:
- Even low-power, in-band transmissions can completely shut down BPL for a mile radius or more. Wonder what happens when I fire up my (FCC licensed) KW on 20 meters for a weekend-long contest?
- BPL is for overhead transmission lines. Burried lines don't have near the capacity but ARE better on interference.
- The bandwidth mentioned for BPL is STDM shared in the same way as cable modem service. YMWV
- Last, BPL operates as an unlicensed part 15 service. All part 15 users are liable to accept ANY and ALL interference from licensed services and must cease use of a part 15 device that causes interference to a licensed service. This passes ALL interference problems off to the end-user.
Turn it off NOW or go to jail...
WB1GOT
-The internet is useful to the community, and with widespread broadband, could be even more useful.
-There are lots of great technical advances made by internet users. To deprive people the bands so a tiny minority can putz around on it deprives the entire scientific and technical community of these discoveries.
-We, the people, own the spectrum, and let you use it. Your rights in the matter end at your right to vote.
There are many other reasons why ham bands should be given to more useful purposes.