Broadband Over Power Lines: Coming Soon?

Decaffeinated Jedi writes "With technology improving and costs droppings, News.com offers up an interesting report on renewed interest in delivering broadband Internet access via power lines (a technology known as BPL). Earlier this month, the Federal Communications Commission proposed a new set of rules for utility companies that might want to offer BPL services as a way to 'encourage broadband for the entire United States' -- particularly hard-to-reach rural areas. As the article notes, EarthLink has already started testing BPL service in using power lines leased in Wake County, North Carolina. Could cable and DSL face a new competitor in the broadband market in the near future?"

Comments

BPL Bad

[dieman]

It tramples over many frequencies used by FEMA and Ham Operators. Ick!

Re:BPL Bad

[loucura!]

The good news is that Ham frequencies trample back, and as a Federally licensed operator, your traffic takes precedence to theirs, and since the stuff will be regulated under Part 15, they will be responsible for all the interference. It probably won't endear you to the neighbors though.

Sound great....

[DjMd]

This sounds great I can't see any problems with this... Oh wait yes I do

Re:Competition?

[RGautier]

That's not true - DSL service is not available in many older suburban areas, much less rural areas. And cable service has virtually no competition in some of these areas, keeping pricing high. By offering BPL in these areas, cable will finally have competition.

Already here

[PrionPryon]

The city of Sault Ste. Marie in Ontario already has a functioning system as discussed in this article.

Re:Already here

[TheSync]

This is interesting: "Wyant is quick to point out PUC won't be using power lines to deliver Internet access directly into the home. Instead, the company is installing wireless access points along its medium-voltage lines in densely populated residential areas."

Already running in Hong Kong

[xstein]

Hutchison Global Communications, a Hong Kong based telecommunications company and ISP, has been offering broadband internet access to Hong Kong residents over their power lines for over a year now.

At downstream bandwidth upwards of 1.5mbits (and infrastructure to cater to upgrades of up to 10mbits) and at a cost of less than US$18/month, the service has been quite successful thus far, and as a subscriber, I cannot recall a single outage due to problems with the power lines (and not trouble at their network centres or regularly scheduled maintenance operations).

Re:oh sure, great...

[zerocool^]

trying to power a desktop computer for 8 hours when your power's out requires something a bit more expensive than a small UPS.


1.) Purchase small ups. Or, get one used from ebay.

2.) Borrow someone's voltmeter.

3.) Open UPS, figure out how much voltage the batteries have (ballpark - if it's 26, it probably means 24, I've never seen a UPS that had a voltage not a multiple of 12, 26 probably means charging voltage).

4.) Unplug batteries. Hook wires up to battery plugs, snake wires outside of UPS.

5.) Purchase 12 volt 135 amp-hour deep-cycle marine batteries (1 per 12 volts of ups battery, obviously). Alternatively, if you don't want to keep distilled water hanging around, go online or to a "battery store" (i.e. batteries plus) and buy sealed lead acid batteries (which probably will cost more for less amp-hours).

6.) Wire up external batteries in series to bring total voltage to standard for UPS.

Congratulations, your 12 amp-hour UPS has just been upgraded to 135 amp-hours. For more power, wire in additional serieses in paralell (not reccomended unless you have a good understanding of charging currents and regulation of power across battery banks).

~Will

Available in my hometown

[dtio]

In some residential areas of Madrid (Spain) you can currently get a symetric (600 Kbps upload and download) internet access via power lines for 39 euros/month. Here they call this technology Power Line Communications (PLC) but I think it's the same as BPL.

I don't know how it works though, I use regular DSL access.

You can get more info here: http://www.neo.es (in spanish).

Re:Christ, WE KNOW

[srhuston]

If you need a hobby, get a CB or something, but the rest of us want our internet.

We *HAVE* a hobby, and it's amateur radio. Try to (legally) use a CB to talk to someone half way across the world, it's not happening.

While I'm new to the debate about BPL and its effects on radio frequencies, I don't think the FCC would allow for something like this if it would completely kill other, legitimate uses of radio (such as amateur frequencies and FEMA, as the grandparent post mentioned). And either way, according to ARRL, this is a Notice of Proposed Rule Making, meaning "We're thinking about deciding on this issue, so let us know what your feelings are", not necessarily "This is what's going to happen."

Re:Don't care

[srhuston]

Okay, so we're flaming today. Got the right underwear ready...

Maybe I should be clearer: none of us care about your hobby.

Maybe I should be clearer: I don't care about your internet access.

But as for a very few people using a fairly wide band for hobby use, well, I couldn't think of a poorer use of spectrum.

Hmm... let's see:

160M: 200kHz
80M: 500kHz
40M: 300kHz
30M: 50kHz
20M: 350kHz
15M: 450kHz
12M: 100kHz
10M: 1.7MHz

"Wide band"? Where? Not until you get up to 2M (4MHz) and 70cm (30MHz), and I don't think those are even going to be affected by BPL. Your cell or cordless phone uses much more bandwidth than any of the above frequencies.

*plonk*

Read the actual FCC notice (link)

[bonnyman]

There are many confused and mis-informed comments on this subject here. If someone's really interested, they can take about 15 minutes to read the actual text of the FCC's notice of proposed rule making (NPRM).

I've got more background on my blog, which cover BPL, FTTH and wireless broadband news. (You can also search the archives using the built-in search function).

Finally, the Virginia Journal of Law and Technology had a draft article on the technology and legal issues that was posted on the FCC's web site a month or two ago.

Damn thought that was Australia....

[quinkin]

Well good on the Austrians (and Japanese, and etc.). Funnily enough I agree that emergency communication is more important than more places to receive high speed spam. Have we all seen the graphical representation of BPL's effects?

I am yet to see any sort of comprehensive study on the environmental effects of modulating power lines (a damn difficult task without BPL in the mix), there has been a lot of FUD but very little research. I do not know what rating power lines they intend to transmit these signals over, but I have spent many an interesting hour reading about the effects that the existing 50-60Hz AC current has on the ionised air around high tension power lines. Regardless of the more esoteric "corona flow" and "ionic squirt" of high voltage lines, it is a bad idea to expand our power lines into higher frequencies.
The non-ionizing portion of the spectrum can be subdivided into:

• The optical radiation portion, where electron excitation can occur (visible light, infrared light)
• The portion where the wavelength is smaller than the body, and heating via induced currents can occur (MW and higher-frequency RF).
• The portion where the wavelength is much larger than the body, and heating via induced currents seldom occurs (lower-frequency RF, power frequencies, static fields).

Wavelength bigger than body = good.
Wavelength smaller than body = bad.

Heh ok, tinhat off now. :)

Q.

A few cautions on your "plan"

[Ellis D. Tripp]

1:)The charging circuitry inside the UPS is designed only to charge the internal battery bank. By adding a huge string of internal batteries, you very well may be overloading the charger. 2:)The inverter circuitry inside the UPS is no doubt designed for limited duty cycle. Running it on a long-term basis (longer than the internal battery would have powered it) will require upgraded heatsinks on the switching transistors, and improved cooling fans. If the inverter transformer is also underrated for continuous use, you will need to forced-air cool it, as well.