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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."
Since when is twice as much "only a few bucks more"? Hint: AOL doesn't count as one of "the local dialup providers".
So a major city has it. Seems to me the only people who would really gain anything are people in rural areas. I get > 3Mbps with my cable line, more than 3 times as fast for about the same price. Although, I can see it being great as a proof-of-concept...
bash: rtfm: command not found
The circle continues?
Yep. And since I'm a duly licensed amateur radio operator, then if it's rolled out in my area then they have to put up with the interference.
I still think that interference with government services on the HF bands will be the death, if not at least the curtailment, this technology. At the very least it cant be deployed near any government installation.
At least then the take up may improve if it's shown to be successful.
Whats the data quota?
Would be nice to be able to have broadband without having to rely on a phone service being active.
What's WKRP? :P
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
Expect somewhat intense resistance to BPL from telecoms and cable companies. They are not just competing for broadband customer in the DSL/Cable/BPL high speed Internet market.
Once you have a megabit-per-second+ line, you can start talking about all sorts of things, including VoIP and video on delivery piggy-backing on national grid.
Cincinatti is famous for something other than WKRP.
Uh, putting chili on spaghetti?
Having a city park graced by golden statues of winged pigs?
Having each of the following: a first rate art museum, a first rate botanical garden, and a first rate zoo?
I've only been there a few times, but seemed like a pretty cool place to me, even from my jaded coastal geek perspective.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
How about symmetrical data rates?
How about less than either cable or DSL pricing?
How about available anywhere you have power (which computers usually need to operate)?
As soon as it's available in my AO, I'll be jumping ship from my current provider.
How about RTFA?
Who will guard the guards?
Have fun when you guys need to hold a huge event or get hit by a tornado or whatever, and the hams who are trained to do it can't do their jobs properly because of all the interference. Would you rather have 1 Mbps internet for $40 a month, which isn't that great compared to cable or DSL (I've seen 3000/800 Kbps for cable, by RCN), or reliable emergency communications? How would you feel if BPL shut down 911? I bet you wouldn't be too happy.
This could lead to some interesting power surge attacks in the future to disrupt communications etc . I Like the speed and the price, but I don't know about plugging my nic into the outlet.
If they can deliver and the service becomes commonplace, you'd definitely see an increase of quality game servers. I have a pretty nice secondary computer that I'd like to host games on, but not at the price of a T1. So yeah, 1 mb/s up would be nice for 30 bucks a month.
WKRP on the Web
Can anyone in Cinci report an increase in HF interference?
"Technology.....the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." Max Firsch
Nice? Nice??
My god, it would be sublime! Comcast, AT&T, Charter, Cox (and any other big cable companies) charge $$$$ for upload speeds over 128kbps. And that's assuming that your in an area where they can offer those higher speeds to a residence, or bother to offer "commercial" service.
Comcast wants over $200 a month for a commercial service that offers 256kbps up. Cox, who I will be using after I move in 2 weeks, offers 3mb down / 256kbps up for $79. That's their commercial service. But..wait for it...for 3mb down / 384 up they want $325.00. I can't speak for AT&T or Charter specifically, as I have not recently lived in areas where either service is available.
If this type of broadband proves reliable, affordable to deploy, and sells for under $50.00 a month, cable companies are going to be in very big trouble...assuming they ignore the obvious.
It interferes with more than amateur radio operators... meh
Think of a giant unshielded antenna that spans hundreds or thousands of miles. yee-haw
Dumb-ass power companies trying to make a buck.
Yes, but over here in our little corner of the universe we like to call "Rational Land," scientific "studies" conducted by for-profit organizations, especially when such studies appear to benefit said organizations, are considered highly suspect until corroborated by external researchers.
But thanks for playing.
Hellz yea! Man what I wouldn't give to get out form under the iron boot of my damn ISP. Yea, I get 3 mbs down, but only like .2 up, and I NEEEEEED that upload bandwidth!!!
I think it'll be good just for the extra competition to drive down the prices.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
OR... It will interfere heavily with ham radio, which will complain, wail and moan to no avail. you sound pretty certain of yourself there with your "properly licensed" service and all, except that's about as solid as a fart in the wind. The FCC almost 10 years ago knuckled under to the New Improved GI Joe Walkie Talkie (cellular) industry, and drew a line across a chunk of public spectrum and said "Thou shalt listen here no more." They've approved an ignorant consumers nightmare called HDTV, the implementation of which has far less to do with HDTV than it does bulldozing certain spectrum into the control of those who hope to profit from selling "personal wireless services". you can no more count on your license remaining valid (or even useable in the HF bands) on the basis of the existence of either the past, or the FCC. I know hams have deluded themselves into thinking they shall overcome, but there are billions of dollars to be made, and your passion for HF radio will be painted as the outmoded, troublesome activities of a handful of eccentric hobbyists. Your interests will be portrayed by the media as quaint and evocative of simpler times. And "logical" voices will call for the removal of your "anachronistic" sorry asses from the path of progress. The FCC will act against the least financially endowed, or simply NOT respond to the interference complaints of those without corporate monies, and POOF. It HIGHLY more likely that ham radio enthusiasts will disappear from the HF bands than broadband providers. Sorry. I hate it, but if you think otherwise, you are seriously lacking in understanding of how money and the United States government interface.
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Let me tell you about how Part 15 certification *really* works. They found no problems because they didn't go looking for them. The only BPL trials so far have been: 1) very limited in area, 2) very limited in time, (1 year? Continuous? Hardee-har) 3) some of them on underground primaries, 4) they don't poll HF spectrum users to find out about interference.
The BPL trials have winked on and off so fast that no interference complaints could be logged. It takes a *lot* of time to document an interference complaint so that it is sufficient for an FCC filing.
The Part 15 industry is notorious for submitting "lab queens" to the FCC for certification. Especially the Part 15 devices that run on house wiring and over power lines... they only *model* the power lines, and the models are pathetically simple-minded -- the better to pass Part 15.
Part 15 is a cesspool of spectrum mismanagement and BPL is the biggest turd ever. What galls me is that the FCC should be playing honest broker here, but instead they are cheerleading a questionable technology.
Hmmm...A long legal battle between amateur radio operators and a power company. Can I bet on it?
-B
Because cable line was designed for wide-band signals: it's coaxial!
A power line, OTOH, is just a very long piece of wire.
the utility has found no problem with radio wave interference and microsoft has found no fundamental security weaknesses in its products. and enron saw no problem with inventing intangible investments. bush found no reason to think saddam wouldn't make a mushroom cloud out of us any day. and i have a marvelous over-water vehicular conveyance device located in brooklyn i can let you have for a pittance. and i see no problem giving you a quit-claim deed to it.
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
I think this throws another player into the fray. One of the main things i hope happens it it becomes a 3 horse race between cable/dsl/power. Cable companies will be forced to improve performance and reduce prices DSL will be forced to expand network coverage allowing for rural America and other huge city's to have coverage. This will also make them fix their price structure. And power, because it already has the infrastructure up will force them to add more infrastructure to compete. This can only be good as far as a economic standpoint. Broadband is still an oligopoly but [hopefully] once wireless and other alternative technologies abound we will have a truly competitive market.
In this situation, the "said organization" only benefits if the service is successful. It'll only be successful if interference is not a major problem. Knee-jerk anti-corporate thoughts aside, I think we're still squarely in "Rational Land."
If there is truly a conflict, I hope the hams can be given some other chunk of spectrum to operate with, because the number of people interested in accessing the Internet truly dwarfs the number interested in ham radio. I do have some sympathy for "we were here first" but at some point it would simply be a tyranny of the minority.
It probably will be at full speed at first, but then they will crank it down after they've attracted a large customer base. ISP behavior 101.
One bad monkey spoils the whole barrel.
As to your first point, yes ham radio would work once the power was out (and BPL was off as it would be), but if you force people to go out to the middle of nowhere to practice, THEY WON'T. Besides which, one of the great points of BPL is that it runs over powerlines so it can be run sold to houses out in the middle of no where, because they're on the power grid. So you couldn't go out into the country unless you decide to trek a few miles into the middle of farmers fields where you won't be near a power line.
Yes, something will replace ham radio if it dies, but that doesn't make it OK to kill ham radio. If humans die, a new dominate speciese will probably appear after a few million years, does that mean we should kill all humans? After all, only a few species want/depend on humans. For many others, humans are "in the way" of their "progress". Same logic, just a rediculous example.
Also, how are riding 3-wheeled ATVs and riding 4-wheeled ATVs mutually exclusive? Nationwide deployment of BPL threatens to kill ham radio, but your friends can still ride a 3-wheeled ATV.
Ham radio does more than just FEMA stuff. Hams help with parades, marathons, races, triathalons, storm chasing, teaching electronic and radio theory to new people, providing a new and interesting way to communicate, all sorts of research, etc. Ham radio fosters good will with other countries. You can talk to other countries, meet interesting people, etc. In some remote areas (like in some island chains) ham radio can be a major source of interisland communication.
How would you like it if ATVs were banned from being used and sold because of their environmental impact? Why make the environment suffer for your little hobby. You could still ride bikes, you could switch to that. Quit holding back environmental progress by clining to some pointless hobby that doesn't even serve the community (like ham radio does)?
Don't drag down my hobby just because you don't care, please.
PS: All of this is ignoring that fact that my ham radio frequencies are protected BY LAW and that the power companys CAN NOT interfer with them. We're not just some group saying "don't kill our hobby", our hobby is legally protected.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Hams object, not because it's a good and valid method of delivering bits, but because it interferes with emergency communications.
8
There's lots of ways to get good Internet feeds to folks; just look at what Robert X. Cringely has done with 802.11b. Look in the archives of his columns at www.pbs.org and see there are untapped alternatives.
To understand why we're concerned, go switch your hi-fi to AM, tune to a vacant spot between stations, and turn up the volume about half way. Then, try to have a phone conversation over a bad cellular connection with your ear six inches from the speakers, and you will still have an easier time communicating than hams will when we experience the 16 db over S9 interference already demonstrated by BPL.
I will make a small wager with you, shaka999. If you live within North America, I'll wager your state's or province's emergency plan counts on hams. So does your county's emergency plan, and your city's.
You see, hams _practice_ at getting data through emergency conditions. We do it at our expense, with equipment we buy, build and maintain ourselves, without government funds.
There's even a subsection of every national ham organization dedicated to emergency services. Yeah, I belong to one, and was out in the last ice storm, two months ago, delivering nurses to the local hospital because the roads were otherwise impassible, and the locals had already overloaded the cellular network to the point where a fast busy tone or "All Circuits Busy" signal was as likely as dial tone.
BPL threatens the entire ability to function on the frequencies needed the most for long-range communications, the HF bands. If this interfered with TV (VHF and UHF), well, everyone would kvetch, but instead the power companies have designed these systems to use HF (aka shortwave) frequencies.
Long range radio relies on HF, because it takes those lower frequencies to effectively bounce off the inner layer(s) of the ionosphere. Higher frequencies (VHF, UHF, SHF, microwave) just zip right through the F, F1 & F2 layers, so we can't do bank shots to get a signal from Earthquakestan to Resourceland to let them know how many units of Type A to send.
Satellite? Well, gee, that presumes the ground stations survived that quake/tornado/hurricane/typhoon, that the power didn't fail, and the phone lines to the earth station still work. Oh, yeah, and IF there's a free satellite channel for us, which NASA's problems have not made any easier.
Now, America's three-quarters of a million hams are not alone here, as you make it seem. The NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration), who you'd expect to be gung-ho over more bandwidth to previously underserved areas, and also FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), have gone on record to object. They document that BPL was a complete disaster, interference-wise, when tried in Japan. The Austrian trials are on hold because the power companies there were not able to rein in the interference.
But, it's Politics with a Capital P; who is beholden to whom, and who bought whom.
Now, you might say, 'well, if there's a disater, the power's down, right'? Not necessarily. BPL can cause interference for miles and miles, but if a hospital needs to call for blood, what's the power company supposed to do, shut down the entire grid?
Besides, remember that hams buy their own gear to practice and learn with. If we can't use HF, well, no one will buy new HF gear, no one will learn the tricks of HF (which is _very_ different than the skills needed for the garden-variety, talk-around-town two meter and 70 cm band users), and no one will bother to keep the automated packet netowrks in service, the digital backbones of the ham world which move the vast majority of message traffic.
Sometimes, _nothing_ but Morse ("the original digital") will get through, but with BPL jamming the HF spectrum, morse will become a dead letter.
I mean, man, you can put a bra on Michael Powell, and yuk it up all you want (see URL) but, damnit, these changes will *kill* people.
http://www.wweek.com/story.php?story=485
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
I guess the biggest factor playing in favor of this technology is that power lines are ubiquitous. I don't call the ISP and fret at the usual "Sorry, this facility is not available in your area", anymore. Hell! It better be available. This can be a big advantage. Almost everywhere you go, you have power. So, you have potential for internet connectivity. No more worrying about whether that place will have an RJ11 or RJ45 jacks or 802.11. I'm really concerned about the security though. So, your next bank transaction is going through that big ugly power transformer sitting a few meters away from your house. How does that make you feel? I mean power lines are easily accessible and so I guess easier to tap into. On the positive side, there are some cools things that may happen. I would assume soon we'll have computers with no ethernet ports. Just plug in the power cable and that's all you need for power as well as network connectivity. Or, the gadgets at home might talk to each other using the power line they are anyways connected to.
My other dog is a Wienerschnitzel.
YOU are the minority. There are people on this planet OUTSIDE the USA, do you know that? There are BILLIONS of people who are not interested in your cheap broadBAND access, but they certainly are interested in broadCAST access.
/.
BPL is RF pollution of the worst kind. It does NOT stop at your borders, quite on the contrary. It makes it impossible for millions of people all over the world to listen to a shortwave transistor radio, to get information, to be entertained and to connect with others.
BPL uses the entire shortwave spectrum and creates a noise floor that can be heard all over the world (Ever heard of shortwave propagation? Ever heard what BPL sound like? I guess not.). With your snotty narrowminded attitude you are in fact denying people their right to free access of information.
Cincinatti goes broadband with hundreds of watts of RF energy dissipated into the atmosphere and South America won't be able to listen to their AM radio stations anymore.
BTW, this is not about ham radio, even though I have had my ham radio license since 1979. No, this is about the millions of villages all over the planet, tuning into shortwave radio broadcasts as their only source of timely information. Hundreds of Millons of individuals will love Americans for denying them that.
Tyrrany of the minority, indeed. Since Americans barely represent 5% of this planet's population that statement fits the shoe perfectly, though I suspect it was made with a slightly different angle in mind in your case.
BTW, "I hope the hams can be given some other chunk of spectrum to operate with" is about as perfect a display of ignorance as I have seen, even here on
There's a fatal flaw in your argument.
You claim that if you have to use ham radios for emergency communication, it will be because the power's out/the internet's down/pick your catastrophe... and then BPL won't be interfering with the hams, who can then step in and save the day.
What you fail to recognize is that if BPL obliterates the HF spectrum, hams will no longer have incentive to maintain the ability to use the HF bands they currently use. Next time there's a tornado, earthquake, 9/11-type terrorist attack, there may not be hams there to help.
Put down the ham set and pick up the power line. The Internet is now infinitely more accessible and far-reaching than amateur radio ever was or will be. Sure, you can link up with satellites and coordinate a large effort to talk with someone on the other side of the world for a few minutes. Sure, the hardware's interesting and it's a nice nondestructive hobby. But the world of radio and wired communications has been growing exponentially while the ham community sits still. Every other person in developed countries has a pocket-sized radio that will let them talk to anyone in the world. Sending images and documents to another person either wirelessly or over land lines is no longer an exciting event to be shown off at the local ham club meeting, it's something ordinary people do every day.
There's something to be said for maintaining old traditions and primitive tools, but don't try to preserve it at the expense of forward progress. There are isolated cases of ham radios playing important roles in emergency missions, but these are very rare and you have to know that the hams were bounding with joy behind their microphones at the opportunity to do something more useful than lie about their last fishing trip.
...
There are two large problems with this type of thinking. For one, "tyranny of the minority" in this case happens to benefit all people, inluding those with broadband, which ceases to function when power lines go down. During hurricanes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters, I think most people will be relieved at the emergency services offered by HAMs. FEMA and other organizations rely on them.
Changing radio frequencies is not all that easy. These are internationally chosen frequencies, because the HF spectrum works worldwide. I doubt the ITU will be willing to change the entire spectrum for a few cities to get broadband. Those are major infrastructure changes, and those frequencies are valuable. Who else is going to give up theirs for HAM's who will not pay (because it is amateur radio for hobbyists)? In this sense, "we were here first" is an excellent argument.
Que tout ce qui est vrai.
"YOU are the minority. There are people on this planet OUTSIDE the USA, do you know that?"
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Irrelevent. This is between the FCC, and power companies in the US. Unless you are afraid Joe User's BPL service in Kansas is going to interfere with Claude User's HAM in France...
If transmissions that are unintentional can affect an area that far away, power companies ought to get into the broadcasting business.
Besides all that, have you heard about the experiments in the UK with BPL? You think that the US is the first to do this? Talk about ignorance. Go read http://www.hydro.co.uk/broadband/index.asp or http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/2722
I could be wrong about the distance that the interference reaches, but if you are wanting to blame something on Americans, find something else.
That said, there has been much fear and apprehension to many new technologies being deployed. I welcome the rollout of these services, as they will confirm those, or belay them for good.
Am I an asshole for saying that the poster should keep an open mind? Maybe I should have been more careful with my wording:
Perhaps you'd like an experiment to see if water freezes when you cool it?
Well, people do experiment with this, and call it supercooling when the water doesn't freeze. Sometimes obvious things are not that obvious and more research is needed before leaping to confusion.
Trying to get people to think rather than have knee jerk reactions and stick their head in the sand is hard work.
Underloved Movies and Pub Quiz: donotquestionme.org
You know what? I've read through a lot of the comments here and as an outside observer I'd say that people are addicted to the Internet.
Notice all the flipping around to justify it.
One is even suggesting a kill switch. I can only conclude that the advocates have never faced a disaster requiring Hams. They most likely have never hammed in their life.
I just hope that these addicts don't end up destroying a good thing in the process of getting their fix.
I suspect the fellow you are responding too is truly ignorant to the scope of the situation.
I thought the exact same thing as you. The issue is not interference with HAM operators -- that's just a side effect of the bigger issue.
The problem is that most people don't understand what RF even is. We need a good analogy that regular people can understand so they can appreciate the scope of the problem.
For instance, there are rules that state how bright and wide the beams can be on our vehicles headlamps. These guys are metaphorically attaching aerial flood lamps to a school bus so everyone in their vehicle can see for miles. The side effect is everyone else on the road is now blind. In this case the light is the transmitter and your eyes are the receiver.
How bout this one, your in a gym having a conversation with some friends -- then a marching band comes rolling in screamming the schools fight song. Guess who the band represents. Try carrying on your conversation now.
The FCC part 15 rules exist for a reason. We just need to make sure they are enforced.
I say let these guys launch the service then we can document the scope of the problems this technology creates before we crush them.
I like the idea of BPL. The power companys just need to run RF grade sheilded power lines first.
Oh, oops thats right. It would cost money -- alot more than just bribing the right senators.
The window of spectrum used by HAM is special purely because it is capable of reaching very long distances. Yay for the ionosphere. . .
This is a most unfortunate conflict of interest as I would LOVE symetric 1mbps for $30/mo.
But there are other ways of getting high speed access, there isn't another frequency range that transmits as well.
Building a better backup.
Zettabyte Storage