Broadband-over-Powerline Experiences?

tarp asks: "I'm moving to the City of Manassas, Virginia, where ZPlug offers BPL (Broadband over Power Lines). The city was the first in the nation to offer BPL as an alternative to DSL or Cable. They claim a 300 to 500 kilobit per second connection speed, and rock-solid performance since the only downtime would be when the power grid goes down. BPL is also rolling out in other locations, despite campaigns by amateur radio enthusiasts to stop it due to interference. Anyway, have any of you used BPL, and is it something I should try rather than getting a DSL or Cable connection?"

Comments

How is this legal?

[OneDeeTenTee]

If it is causing so much interferance I would hope that it would be easy to stop or moderate.

How strong is the interferance?

How far from the power lines does it extend? (Of course power lines are everywhere, so even a 10 meter wide stretch of interferance would be significant.)

Re:How is this legal?

[Student_Tech]

From what I understand, it isn't so much a specific interferance as just a raising of the static noise so that signals which would have been receivable before fade into the noise.

Check the availability of cable first

[seinman]

Is 500k really that fast nowadays? I don't know about your city specifically, but Cox seems to cover most of the state for cable (i'm from Norfolk myself) and they recently upgraded their regular service to 4mbps down, 512kbps up... I think we're paying $40 a month for that, $50 if you don't subscribe to cable. So unless ZPlug is really freakin' cheap, i'd say you're getting ripped off.

Bleeding Edge

[rhettoric]

"If you're not on the edge you're taking up too much space!"

That might be applicable for surfing, but anyone who has is a chronic early-adopter has been burned by New-Amazing-Technology(tm) time and time again (My father is one of these, he's purchased betamax machines, laserdisc players, Newtons, eBooks, etc.).

Unless there is a truly compelling reason to go with the new, different technology (i.e. it's either this or 56k, or its marginally cheaper), stick with what works.

I would write more, but my Commodore-64 is acting up.

Not just the HAM guys...

[gus goose]

... for the record, those of us flying Remote Controlled aircraft are gravely concerned about the potential impact (no puns intended). We use 72Mhz Transmitters, and the harmonics and other stuff I don't understand are apparently causing significant control issues with our aircraft.

gus

Radio Interference

[tiny69]

http://www.gobpl.com/ - This site makes it sound like there is not much future in BPL.

http://vhfgroup.rochesterny.org/downloads/ - A couple of MP3's of the interference.

http://iwce-mrt.com/ar/radio_bpl_deployments_fir e/ - FEMA, which has a lot more influence that the ARRL, is siding againt BPL.

Any wire can act as antenna. Power lines by themselves give off a signal. But because power lines are not perfect antennas, efforts to limit any interference caused by BPL will not be 100% effective. What will kill BPL is if it's starts interfering with emergancy services (FEMA) or consumer products.

Personally, I'd be more concerned about the privacy issues. Any data on the power lines is essentially being transmitted to anyone with a radio who happens to be able to pick up the signal. Spread spectrum technology would help with privacy concerns.

This sounds like a fun project, sniffing traffic from power lines....

Also when they bag the whole idea

[n1ywb]

BPL test areas are starting to get shut down left and right as interference complaints and excesive radiated power measurements start rolling in. Don't say f-you to your cable company yet.