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Cincinnati Gets Broadband Over Power Lines
kotj.mf writes "According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, Cincinnati-area electric utility Cinergy has become the first electric utility in the country to offer broadband over power lines. There's also a press release. At $29.95/month for 1 Mb/s both upstream and down, it's only a few bucks more than the local dialup providers. Can we expect the power companies to start giving Cable and DSL providers a run for their money? Finally, my town gets AHEAD of the times, for once."
don't worry, Cinergy wasn't slashdotted, it was just a bad link actual Cinergy site
Theory of flight?! I'll teach you the theory of fist!!
did you RTFA? "He said the utility has found no problem with radio wave interference, a concern raised by many amateur radio operators." After a 1 year test, it didn't interfere, and the FCC really wants this to happen. It is going forward.
Amen. The interference this service causes on the amature bands is well documented at the ARRL website. I know there is the usual cry that Amature Radio is dead, and isn't useful, and what have you. But the fact is the amature radio service is a vital emergency service, and has a large population of experienced old-school hardware hackers who are still experimenting and adding to the art.
Broadband is good.
Broadband over powerlines - not so good.
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
I've had DSL since 1998. I believe we had one of the earlier successful, widespread DSL rollouts. (Before that I will say that there WAS a big void in broadband - ISDN was never a real option here.)
Note that over the weekend Cincinnati Bell jumped residential broadband from 768kbs downstream to 3Mbit, without a rate increase! This is the second time they've significantly increased the bandwidth with no change in rates - the first time was just before the RoadRunner rollout. Long live competition!
There goes the mod points i just had.
For 3mb down/384 up Cox charges only 199/mo, business account. At least here in phoenix.
It isn't just amateur radio. Try ships at sea, aeronautical communications, police, fire, forestry, government, military, disaster services, broadcasting, and many others. Those services are allocated those frequencies by international treaty. They are not going to vacate their frequencies so that a few pr0n addicts can download photoshopped pictures of Sarah Michelle Gellar a little faster.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
It was a personal check, not a city check. Dumb, but not quite as dumb. This was before he was mayor, he was only a councilman, so I guess it didn't hurt him too bad.
And yeah, the "please" thing confused me for the first few weeks of college (at UC). The other things were, they say "sweep" rather than "vacuum", and they leave out "to be", for instance, "the carpet needs swept".
You should read my post in the responses to the last time this was brought up. Regardless of what's using the spectrum that BPL interferes with, the fact that BPL does not in any way require or benefit from skywave propagation/ionospheric propagation and stomps all over the -only- frequency range that is pysically capable of bouncing off the atmosphere is a complete and utter waste. Not to mention that amateur radio provides long distance communications not only to third world countries, but more importantly in the event of a natural disaster. Ham radio operators are constantly pushing the limits of communications technology, what do you think the designers that work at the big communications companies do when they go home? Where do you think the communications buffs who join the big communications firms come from? Anyway, its a waste, and it tramples a service to the world that is without a doubt one of the most important ones when it comes to saving your life the next time you're stuck in a collapsed building like at the WTC towers.
While I agree that the ARRL has a vested interest in this debate, I think it is fair to say that they know a thing or two about interference (see this link for instance). Not only has this been shown to interfere, think of the interference to BPL. Allowing this to go forward will force something to give.
This isn't just a local problem either. Have a look at this report from the ECC (they are a European agency) [NOTE: Sorry, it is in MS Word format]. They clearly believe that interference potential in the frequency range up to 30 MHz "are such that the risk of interference to radio services cannot be limited to a national or regional scale" (see the section entitled "General Conclusions of the report). This is a 112 page report, and while I freely admit I have not read all of it, they clearly say that this won't be a local problem, so just leaving the city isn't going to help. They go on to say that complete interference level restrictions won't work since so many devices currently give off interference in these ranges, but that the BPL (Called PLT in this report) will give "much higher" level of interference.
Several people in this tread have argued that amateur radio is a "dinosaur" or lived passed its usefulness. Many have already pointed out the problems with this. In many parts of the country, HF radio is the only reliable form of communication. In emergency situations HAM radio has proved itself many times over. Have a look here for instance. FEMA have defended the need for amateur radio on numerous occasions.
There is more at stake here than HAM. Have a look at this chart. Of particular interest are the chunks that are noted as "Radio Astronomy". Have a look at this report. Of note here is that the radio astronomy bands have issues with interference already. Solar and molecular cloud observations fall in these wavelengths. Do we really want to add to the pollution of the electromagnetic spectrum? The BPL system will also be subject to interference. This seems like a lose-lose situation to me.