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

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: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.

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).

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*