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BPL: The Internet's Fool's Gold

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hand-meet-other-hand dept.

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."

9 of 300 comments (clear)

  1. Thank Slashdot as well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

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

    1. Re:Thank Slashdot as well by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 5, Informative
      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."
  2. FCC favors business over public interest ?!? by javaxman · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Say it's not so! I'm shocked !
    Where is the administration looking out for the public interest that I've become so accustomed to?!?

    What's that you say? Someone from the White House told them to get broadband-over-power-lines through no matter what, even if it destroys HAM radio and other public-use frequencies through interference? Why on earth would anyone do that? There isn't any corruption or corporate favoritism in Washington, is there?!?

    What do you mean lawyers outnumber engineers at the FCC by a near-infinite margin!?! How could that be so?!?

    1. Re:FCC favors business over public interest ?!? by po8 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Parent wrote " My `public interest' would be nicely served by actually being able to get broadband. And I have power lines."

      Which is why this stupid idea is so seductive. Everybody wants broadband, everybody has power lines. What's the problem?

      (1) It doesn't work, and really can't work. (2) It has bad negative consequences for other systems (forget ham radio, and consider the emergency radio bands it overlaps). (3) Even if it did work, it would be more expensive and less available than current broadband channels.

      I mean, everybody who wants broadband probably has water pipes, too. Why not broadband over tapwater? Pulse-modulate the chlorine and fluorine levels in the pipes, and read the bits right off there... BPL isn't much more sensible than BT when you look at it closely.

  3. Never underestimate the power of corruption by wsanders · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Never underestimate the power of corrupt legislatures and utility companies to force adoption of bad technologies:

    http://powermarketers.netcontentinc.net/newsreader .asp?ppa=8knpp%5EZltmlupoXUnj!6%3C%22bfek%5C!

    A few BPL trials have been dropped because the technology just cannot compete. But the threat is still real. Once fixed wireless is available everywhere, BPL
    technology's only hope of success is through open graft and bribery.

    My hope would be that Texans would give their much-abused highway signs a break from using them for target practice and begin utilizing the numerous BPL devices that will be
    available. But old habits die hard.

    --
    Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
  4. Laugh Test by Detritus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've never understood how BPL even made it to the trial stage. Any EE with two brain cells is going to recognize that putting broadband HF/VHF carriers on unshielded power lines is a recipe for interference to many licensed radio services. See that wire going down the road? It's a fscking antenna, you moron!

    --
    Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
    1. Re:Laugh Test by jd · · Score: 5, Informative
      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.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
  5. Re:Realistically by Man_Holmes · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you read the article you would have learned that hams aren't the only ones affected by the interference generated by BPL.

    So if the fire department using 20th century radios is unable to communicate and your house burns down is that OK with you?

    BPL is flawed technology trying to be rammed down people's throats. Those nerdy hams were just the first to see the wolf in sheep's clothing thats all.

    Man Holmes

  6. Cincinnati BPL by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 5, Informative
    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."