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Google Invests in Power-Line Broadband
fsterman writes "ZDNet reports that Current Communications Group has received investment money from Google, Hearst, and Goldman Sachs for their internet over broadband ventures. The Wall Street Journal reports that the three companies invested roughly $100 million in the start-up. Current Communications and Cinergy Broadband said they will create one joint venture to bundle broadband and voice services for Cinergy's 1.5 million customers. Current also has plans to use the new investment money to expand its broadband over power line deployments in the U.S. and overseas."
I was getting worried. It was already past noon local time and I hadn't seen a /. submission on Google.
I thought that internet-over-power lines was pretty much a dead concept - not simply due to the fact that you had to largely redo your power infrastructure anyways so that it doesn't filter out your data, but because by the very nature of modulating a signal on a high power wire, you're building the world's largest radio transmitter network, and flooding everything with radio interference.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Hasn't this tech been show to be damaging to Ham radios? Something that is usually very helpful in times of emergency, when phones and sometimes power is even out?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Power line technology has various problems, such as the fact that power lines were not designed to carry high frequency transmissions and tend to turn into giant antenna systems when they are used in such a manner, disrupting accessibility to radio services such as shortwave radio and amatuer radio. It also turns out to be a rather expensive technology to implement as well as being problematic, since transformers tend to absorb and block RF signals on the power lines, requiring expensive solutions to bypass them. It is to the point where it will be so expensive to implement that it would be better to just implement a fiber optic network, which would provide better bandwidth anyway.
I think a much better and more effective, as well as higher quality solution for both bandwidth broadband avialability and the choice, and for maximum capacity, is to construct a shared fiber optic networks which could be used to carry telephone, cable tv, and internet. These systems should be owned and operated by local governments (who could contract out maintanence and construction to independant contractors if they wish) who would charge an access fee to fund the operatation the networks, and which would be open to all information service providers to provide their information services over them, such as multiple cable tv, phone and internent providers, giving people perhaps dozens more choices, assuring competition and choice for the consumer. This also would seperate the operation of the physical infrastructure from the information services, so one entity isnt controlling both the information services and infrastructure, which allows that entity to have a monopoly over the information services provided over the physical infrastructure. Instead access to the physical infrastructure would be avialable to all information services, like phone, internet and cable, and all of the information services and consumers would pool their resources to build one communications system which tends to be more efficient than every information service having to have its own information service, and it would make it eisier for smaller companies to enter the market and provide additional choices for the consumer since they do not have to fund the construction of another communications system for their exclusive use.