BPL: The Internet's Fool's Gold

Joe Barr writes "One of the more fascinating tidbits of information I came across while researching this story on NewsForge about BPL, the fatally flawed wannabe-broadband-provider technology, was that at the very same time the FCC was downplaying the threat of the interference BPL creates, the FCC's very own test results were showing just the opposite."

Comments

Thank Slashdot as well

[Anonymous Coward]

Was Slashdot any better with its breathless stories about "The Myth of Radio Spectrum Interference", "The Illusion of Spectrum Scarcity", and so on?

Re:Thank Slashdot as well

[Jeremy Erwin]

It should be pointed out that Ham radios (nor most any other affected device) are not the smart receivers David Reed has in mind.

From Salon's article:

The problem isn't with the radio waves. It's with the receivers: "Interference cannot be defined as a meaningful concept until a receiver tries to separate the signal. It's the processing that gets confused, and the confusion is highly specific to the particular detector," Reed says. Interference isn't a fact of nature. It's an artifact of particular technologies. This should be obvious to anyone who has upgraded a radio receiver and discovered that the interference has gone away: The signal hasn't changed, so it has to be the processing of the signal that's improved. The interference was in the eye of the beholder all along. Or, as Reed says, "Interference is what we call the information that a particular receiver is unable to separate."

Re:BPL?

[jgaynor]

RTFA. It explicitly states that power companies cannot become backbone providers because long-haul data gets killed by interference from transformers/repeaters. They can still drop leased lines to substations and last-mile it from there, but this in turn feeds those very same backbone providers the utilities seek to compete with . . .

Speaking of which - why arent the power companies themselves pushing for more active enforcement of the telecommunications act of 1996 regarding this issue? This seems like a perfect place to call it out - lines sold to utilities at forced wholesale prices could A) make them some money, B) hurt the telcos and C) make consumers happy.

Dropping it left and right

[leighklotz]

It's a bad idea and has been dropped left and right. Here's a paper from Canada on BPL. And here's a counter proposal for those who feel that energy companies need to be in the network business: Broadband Over gas (apparently not a joke).

Re:Laugh Test

[jd]

What amazes me is that it made it to the trial stage in the US even after trials in other countries (such as the UK) had verified that the interference was not only present but unacceptable.

We're not just talking about ignorance - which can be excused in Government, as it's almost mandatory - we are in the realms of willful stupidity, as the results were known in advance.

Re:BPL == Bastard Public License

[MightyMartian]

The major obstacle is that it would blow HAM operators and emergency frequencies out of the water. Emergency services would have to start using smoke signals. It's as bad an idea as I can possibly imagine.

Cincinnati BPL

[YrWrstNtmr]

It's being tested in the Cincinnati area by Current Communications a division of Cinergy. Currently, about 8,000 homes wired up.

According to the section chief of the Ohio ARRL, problems are minimal.
(at the bottom of the article:) "Joe Phillips of Fairfield, the Ohio section chief for the American Radio Relay League, says that so far the Cinergy roll-out hasn't created the radio interference many ham radio operators had feared."

or, you could read TFA.

[javaxman]

A couple of key points from TFA, just so you don't have to be bothered to inform yourself before having an opinion :

The HF frequency spectrum -- from 3MHz to 30MHz -- and the VHF spectrum - 30MHz to 80MHz -- are the two that would suffer the most interference from Access BPL. These spectrums are used by thousands of public safety agencies: police departments, fire departments, and emergency medical services. They are also used by the military, by government entities at all levels, by ships and planes, and by many other licensed users. The communications of all of these critical functions would be subjected to the interference generated by Access BPL.

and

... transformers can eat the broadband traffic at points between the power plant and its final destination. Now that we know the signal has to carried by other means in order to get it into the neighborhoods being served, a large chunk of the original cost savings have disappeared...

In other words, it doesn't work _anywhere_ you have to cross over a transformer ( think about how many places you see those ) and would cause problems for public safety, TV, low-frequency radio, and a host of other wireless spectrum uses. We'd be much better off looking at municipal wireless WiMAX-style systems or other means of encouraging broadband network build-out. I agree that both government and industry need to get behind broadband... just not over unshielded high-voltage lines, thanks. There are other methods, many of which are just as cost-effective without the major downsides.

BPL and Amateur Radio

[MonMotha]

I see a lot of people badmouthing BPL or Amateur Radio over one-another. I'm an amateur radio operator, and I'd oppose BPL even if it didn't interfere with the amateur service (as some implementations don't: they notch out the amateur bands since the ARRL has been so vocal).

It really is a silly idea. Let's run MF/HF/VHF signals over this really long, unshielded wire to deliver internet to people's houses. Of course we can't actually get it to the house because of those pesky transformers, so we still need to retrofit our grid and use something else (like wifi) for the last 100 yards. Then there's that pesky issue of power lines being really bad transmission lines at those high frequencies (they're definately not constant impedence), so we'll have to throw a lot of power into those lines (at RF) to get the signal where we want it. What? It radiates? Hum, oh well.

The obvious solution is to string real transmission lines (like coax, twisted pair, or, obviously, fiber) along those poles (protected in some kind of harder casing) and underground. But that's expensive? Duh, retrofitting something meant to deliver huge amounts of energy at one frequency (50 or 60Hz, depending on your side of the pond) to deliver data at high rates of speed isn't going to be cheap. At least don't be half-assed about it.

Also, just so people know. The amateur service doesn't really have all the bandspace people make it out to have. Some bands are surprisingly small: the voice section of 17m, for example, is from 18.110MHz to 18.168MHz - only 58kHz of bandwidth, or enough for 20 single-sideband voice conversations if everyone plays *really* nice and lines up perfectly. There are giant posters like this one that show the major service to which each frequency band is allocated to in the US (many of which are also assigned internationally by ITU, at least down in HF). The first 3 rows (3kHz-30MHz) are the bands likely to be given problems by BPL. The amateur service is teal-green colored on that poster. Look for yourself how little is actually given to the service on many bands. 80m (3.5MHz) is about the only one that you're likely to even spot quickly below 30MHz!

Re:What if BPL is the ONLY choice? Insensitive clo

[evilviper]

(I'm also technically within the National Radio Quiet Zone [google it if you never heard of it] which makes additional wide-area wifi towers problematic).

Haha! I hate to be the one to tell you this, but even if BPL is rolled out to 99% of the world, you will be in the 1% that won't ever get it.

If you're gonna diss my only broadband option, at least gimme some home for an alternative (other than moving)!!!

ISDN, T-1, Satellite, dual-line dial-up. You have a lot of options for broadband, they just don't happen to be terribly cheap. If I was in your place, I would probably start up a broadband company, based on microwave transmitters/recievers.

But the real issue here is that having broadband is nice, but far from necessary. And HAMs aren't just kids playing around with several thousands of dollars worth of radio equipment, they serve an important role. It's BPL that is stomping all over other radio signals, not the other way around, and it should not be rolled out until/unless they can solve that problem.

"Dear Slashdot, I live on a coral island in the middle of the Pacific ocean, and the only way for me to get broadband is to drain all the water out of the ocean, but those damn environmentalists keep trying to stop me."