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Web Access Over Power Lines
anaesthetica writes "The CSMonitor is reporting that power companies may now be able to break into the internet provider market, giving consumers a third option, outside of telephone and cable companies. From the article, "Broadband over Power Lines (BPL), with investments from big-name companies including Google and IBM, is beginning to move beyond small trial projects to deploying systems for large communities." Earthlink may offer BPL as soon as next year. Apparently, a major source of opposition to BPL is operators of ham radios."
Apparently, a major source of opposition to BPL is operators of ham radios.
And anyone else who uses any kind of radio. BPL still has massive radio interference problems, fullstop. Every trial so far has resulted in cancellation of services because the interference ruins too many other things.
Once again it'll be announced, it'll be trialled, it'll fail. I said it almost every other time someone else comes up with this too good to be true notion.
This was mooted 14 years ago. I can't see any big changes. Bypassing the local transformers will still cost a shit-load of money.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
Provided they take down the exisiting powerlines and replace them with high tension co-ax. It's not just Ham radios that this will irritate, its everyone. The FCC and its international counterparts have restrictions on EM waves not just because they interfere with communications, but because they interfere with everything from aeroplane and medical electronics to cell division.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
The opposition, even with the offer of notching the offending frequencies, is that the notches that have been demonstrated don't do enough.
You could say it lessens the interference by 50% or so, and that's not enough because ANY increase in the "noise floor" (the background signal that exists on a frequency which a signal must overcome in order to be heard) makes it more difficult for ham radio operators to use the frequency spectrum that they are licensed to use.
One solution would be for ham radio operators to just increase the power they use. Unfortunately, most hams operate (on HF anyway) at their full power capacity. Also many hams enjoy the challenge of low-power communications of 5W or less (worldwide communications are possible on under 5W).
The principle of the thing is that why should a commercial venture be able to do the things that, so far, no one has been allowed to do: emit RF across such an immense spectrum of frequencies, including those for which others have what the FCC calls "primary" usage granted to them.
The ARRL has said that they do support a Motorola solution because it does not add any interference to the ham radio frequencies. So not all BPL is bad. Ham radio operators are opposed to those that are bad.
is a graph of the licensed frequencies that some hams think that the unlicensed BPL technology will pollute (blacked out).
Hams are fond of shortwave because it allows people to communicate around the globe (not only line-of-sight).
As an Amateur Radio Operator I think I may be able to answer this question.
Firstly, there are a fairly large number of licensed operators. Not everyone is active in the hobby, but it is the number of licensed operators that the ARRL (American Radio Relay League -- Amateur Radio's main 'club', so to speak) uses when confronting the FCC and other regulatory bodies (including Congress) about issues that are a concern to Amateur Radio.
Secondly, as previously reported on Slashdot (no, I cannot find the article at the moment) the BPL companies' attempts to "notch out" the part of the BPL signal that interferes with Amateur Radio transmissions have not been very effective.
Thirdly, while BPL is certainly a good idea in theory, and I for one would welcome our new BPL overlords if they can dispose with the interference on the Amateur Radio bands, there are still technical details to work out before it can be used harmoniously in conjunction with existing services, including Amateur Radio.
Remember, Amateur Radio serves a critical role during emergencies to provide communication when other means are not available. If those power lines go down there will be no interference, but what if they are still up and there is a major emergency? Also, many Amateur bands are close to other public service bands. Yes, I know that the police are using cell phones now, but unless there is something that allows the cell towers to give priority to the police phones over my phone they police may be unable to communicate in an emergency.
I know our local ambulance service uses radio. So does our fire service. BPL will interfere with them as well, though not to the same extent because they are shorter range.
A little interference is not such a big deal with shorter range communications like the local fire and ambulance, but when you are trying to push a signal across the country, that small amount of interference is a major issue.
I'm sure I'm going to get flamed for this, but such is life. These are the main issues to the best of my understanding. Again, I would love to see BPL work. I live out in the boonies and I can't even get cable, never mind DSL.
Yes, the Amateur Radio community is in opposition to BPL, due to the high degree of RFI (radio frequency interference) that BPL puts out. The problem that not as many people are talking about is that this will also affect many fire/rescue/police radio frequencies, which occupy the same radio spectrum as the BPL systems interfere with. This could potentially cause severe problems in emergency situations. So no, it's not just a bunch of us HAMs whining about BPL "ruining our hobby". We also interact with emergency personnel in emergency situations, severe weather, natural disasters, and yes, even terrorist attacks.
It's a [______] thing...you wouldn't understand.
Contrary to popular belief, we don't live in a military junta, and the law is honored. Spectrum has been allocated to the amateurs and it is the responsibility of the BPL providers to avoid stomping on it. The amateurs also have credibility, having provided the only available reliable communication during events such as the Florida hurricanes, eastern blackouts, and September 11th.
The real problem w/ BPL is that using it for long haul requires a costly investment by the utilities that has not been discussed. Don't know what causes it, but putting a massive inductance (e.g. transformer winding) on a high-speed data line tends to filter the data out (!!!).
So, one needs to put gear at all the subs, trannys and protection devices to provide bypassing for the data signals. The end result is that the communication data ends up using the existing fiber backbone until the last hop to the customer premise if the utility wants to avoid making a massive investment in duplicating telco and cable infrastructure. This makes BPL relatively less competitive except for servicing customers outside of existing xDSL and cable service areas.
Southen-Electric are already providing broadband over powerlines in some locations here in the South of England, and have been doing so for some time. The broadband side of the company are known as BlinkBroadband.
I've actually had BPL in the Allentown, PA area for a year now. What cancellation?
main(O){10<putchar((O--,102-((O&4)*16| (31&60>>5*(O&3)))))&&main(2+ O);}
LN2 is cool!
This sounds strikingly similar to what X10 has been doing for a long time. Using a special outlet plug-in, you can control various fixtures (lights, fans, etc) via a remote control, as well as using a timer and motion-detectors. A friend of mine has been using X10 motion sensors in his house for a while now, so that his kitchen light comes on whenever anyone enters, and turns off 2-3 minutes afterward.
I'm not up to par on the technology used in the X10 devices, but it can't be all that dissimilar to sending any kind of digital "internet" signal over the power lines as well. Actually I'm surprised it took this long to surface (granted I haven't been scouring the net looking for this information either.)
And they said zombies weren't real!
RWE, a very big electricity company in Germany used to sell powerline internet access in towns Essen and Muelheim an der Ruhr in july 2001. It only lasted until september 2002.
According to RWE it was shut down because some frequencies used by powerline were reserved for security services. The real reason was though that almost nobody used it - RWE had only some 200 paying customers - because internet access via ADSL was much cheaper and in both Muelheim (I used to live there back then) and Essen widely availiable.
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
The article was light on the details of why the hams are opposed to this, except for the issue of whether or not it will interfere with their signals. If the BPL companies are offering to NOT interfere with the signal, why is there still opposition?
Because the current definition of "not interfering with" is based on fairly loose standards, because BPL noise could ruin the opportunity to use other parts of the RF spectrum in the future, but mainly because power-cabling is unshielded and currently so inefficient at broadband frequencies that they will initially have to use alot of signal, and radiation will be a given, regardless of what's promised.
Think of this as background noise (eg like your neighbour's air conditioner). It may be quiet, but its noise still prevents you from hearing the birds clearly, the breeze in the trees, the buzz of the bees, etc. BPL radiation will reduce our ability to detect faint RF signals. When the extraterrestrials finally get around to thanking us for the LP on Voyager, we won't be able to hear them.
On another note, not to be a dick, but how can a bunch of hams form a "major" opposition against the power companies, IBM, Google etc?
Well, that's the problem. Maybe we need a "sierra club" or "greenpeace" to act as watchdogs on our RF spectrum...
I do believe that BPL is probably inevitable, though... so, sometime in the future, when most of the power grid is adapted for this, and all new AC-powered devices have BPL filters built-in, then the BPL radiation should be less.
main(O){10<putchar((O--,102-((O&4)*16| (31&60>>5*(O&3)))))&&main(2+ O);}
LN2 is cool!
the AARL has a collection of video and sound files demonstrating BPL interference.l l #Audio
Vid:
http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/aud-vid.htm
Sound: http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/aud-vid.htm
unless there is something that allows the cell towers to give priority to the police phones over my phone they police may be unable to communicate in an emergency.
In fact, that very point was recently demonstrated in London. From this article:
In the immediate aftermath, a statement from the U.K.'s largest network operator, Vodafone, said that an excessive number of calls had caused outages. The operator consequently set aside capacity for phone calls to emergency services.
"Following the major incident in London today, Vodafone London switches are at capacity (which is very rare), so we're having to go into 'access overload' procedures, which means freeing up a proportion of capacity across London to ensure the police and emergency services can communicate," the company said.
My little corner of the world was just graced with this technology a little over a year ago through a partnership with Cinergy (power company) and Current Braodband (the ISP).
As a long time user of cable broadband, I've listed my top three pics for "best parts of this technology".
1) Most homes have a great deal more power outlets than phone or cable outlets. This greatly increases the chance that you won't have to run cable across your room to your desktop/wireless router.
2) I get to see the people's faces when I tell them that I have broadband coming over my power lines.
3) $30/month. Wait, did I say that right? Yeah, I did...$30/month. Not an introductory rate, not a special "we don't want you to cancel your service" deal. Just straight up $30/month. The cheapest alternative in my ares is $45/month for DSL, followed closely by $50/month for cable.
Ever heard of WIMAX? BPL is an not needed, not cost effective, and a poorly engineered solution to the problem. And the hams are right...
BPL is a great idea if you have the technological sophistication of a politician, lawyer or businessman. In other words, you are a classic PHB.
On the other hand, if you have the technological sophistication of an EE or even a junior level physics major, you understand that the basic concept of BPL comes with a serious technical problem of interference to users of the radio spectrum. That's ALL users, not just hams.
Broadbanded signals on an unshielded, unbalenced wire will radiate. That's basic physics. Powerlines are long pieces of wire that make fair transmitting antennas. The wiring in your house makes a fair transmitting antenna. This is what the PHBs appear to not understand.
Hams are typically early adopters of new technology and do not oppose BPL per say. Hams oppose sources of interference. BPL in it's trial systems has typically destroyed all communications in the low VHF and down frequency range. That includes direct broadcast TV channels 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 (in the US), CB radio, shortwave broadcast, standard AM broadcast and (oh yeah) ham radio.
Why don't other users of radio spectrum oppose BPL? Hams tend to be technicaly savvy and vocal about their concerns. The folks with the authority to speak for other radio services are mostly politicians, lawyers and businessmen. In other words PHBs who understand politics, law and economics but are often technologicaly illiterate.
I live in the Cincinnati area and have been patiently waiting for the Cinergy (our local power company) BPL service to be deployed to my area. My message to anyone waiting for BPL to come to their area: DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH!!
i al/PricingAndBenefits/
s .asp?news_id=420
b roadband/2100-1036_3-5777917.html
Cinergy had a huge multi-year beta test, followed by a production rollout.... that ONLY covered the area that the beta test did. That was over a year ago, since then, they've yet to expand their coverage area AT ALL.
It sounds too good to be true at $35 for 3mbit SYMETRICAL (no more DSL/Cable 20x download that you have for upload BS)
Current (The ISP that cinergy partnered with):
http://www.current.net/ServiceAndPricing/Resident
Press release from Cinergy:
http://www.cinergy.com/News/default_corporate_new
Recent investment in Cinergy BPL by Google:
http://news.com.com/Google+invests+in+power-line+
Prevent linux based DDOS's!
http://linux.denialofservice.org/
As a licensed amateur radio operator I was beside myself when the FCC gave BPL deployment the green light. It proved to me that none of the commissioners have ANY technical competence at all, and that any decision right or wrong is made entirely for political reasons.
Current BPL technology is a kludge at best, it is the equivalent of duct tape and bailing wire. The interference that is created doesn't just effect the ham bands, it effects every service that is found between 1.8-80 MHz. The "interference mitigation" card is pure bull shit. For non hams how would you feel if I developed a Internet delivery method that disrupted your cell phone service? And every time you attempted to use your cell phone you disrupted your neighbors Internet access.
BPL is a bad idea, the laws of physics will never make it viable or economical, how many of you would get pissed off if I was constantly disrupting your Internet service for minutes or hours with my HF transceiver when I drive through town, I know I would.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Here ya go.
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.pdf
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
thc69 wrote Er...if BPL is up in said emergency, and ham fails, then why not just use the BPL connection?
BPL may be down in the disaster area but it may be up in another area, preventing that area from receiving the transmission.
Let's put this in computer terms:
You've got an 802.11g wireless access point in your house. It is using a specific set of frequencies to maintain your connection between the AP and your computer. Let's say that you are using channel 9 in the US, meaning that your AP is communicating on a small slice of spectrum surrounding 2.452GHz (2452MHz).
Now let's put a microwave oven in your house. Your microwave oven is set to generate energy at 2.450GHz (2450MHz). There is a magnetron inside the microwave designed to generate energy at that frequency. It most likely doesn't generate just 2450MHz waves but generates energy on frequencies that generate a narrow bell curve centered on 2450MHz.
Now let's say that your microwave oven is a little out of spec. The shielding is a little leaky and the magnetron is generating energy at a little higher frequency. Now your microwave is putting out energy at 2451MHz +/- 1MHz. That means that the generated energy stretches from 2450MHz to 2452MHz.
Your wireless access point actually uses 22MHz of spectrum, meaning that the signal stretches from 2441MHz to 2463MHz. But look! Your microwave is "transmitting" from 2450MHz to 2452MHz, right on top of the bandwidth used by your AP. Not only that, part of that energy is right on your center or carrier frequency, which is part of what makes this all work.
Now it's time to talk about noise. Imagine that you're trying to hold a conversation across a table in a crowded room. If you're in a quiet restaurant, you should be able to hear each other across the table easily. If you're in a diner with music playing, it because a little more difficult to hear because you've got the constant level of background music. If you're in a bar, it's a little more difficult to hear since the background noise is even louder. If you're in a dance club, it's going to be even more difficult. As the background noise becomes louder, you have to increase your speech volume to overcome the background noise.
The signal to noise ratio is the amount of received signal compared to the amount of noise in the environment. In the conversation scenario, it's how much louder your voice is than the other noise in the room. As the background noise increases, you have to increase your volume (power) to be heard over the noise.
The same thing happens with your wireless access point. There is a certain amount of radio noise in the environment. As long as the AP signal is a certain amount stronger than the noise, when measured at your computer's antenna, the computer can communicate with the AP. If the signal isn't stronger than the noise, the computer can't talk to the AP.
Now you decide to turn on the microwave. It starts generating additional energy (noise, as far as your computer and AP are concerned) right on the frequencies used to communicate. If the new noise level is higher than the signal level, you're offline. (I know of one installation where I can reproduce this exact scenario on command. Turn off the microwave and one computer can't talk until the microwave is turned off.)
The same thing happens with ham radio. If there is an emergency and BPL goes offline, I can receive fairly well because the noise level just dropped significantly. When I try to transmit (most likely at a reduced power level, since I'm running on emergency power), my signal has to be received by someone else. If that person is right next to a BPL source that is leaking lots of noise, he isn't going to be able to pick up my signal because the background noise masks the my signal.
thc69 wrote Damn the ham....
Let's look at potentially affected spectrum. Here are a couple of important links:
Ahhhhhhh, I have heard this before, and your kind of right, but thats only half the problem.
There has been a hurricane in YOUR town, your local power is out, you have no inteference and you are sending out SOS signals.
People in another unaffected town who would normally be able to hear your weak signal can no longer hear anything but static caused by their own localised BPL fuzz.
liqbase
As a ham, I can tell you that where BPL is in use, like Briarcliff Manor, NY ( Route 9 A), almost all ham and shortwave frequencies are hit with a 20-+9 digital noise carrier. This is not an inconvenience, or a work around. It is finding your local swimming pool no longer clear, but full of someone else's waste products. Since you didn't *need* to swim, it's OK. CB users also comment on the interference. While "not cool", CB is still probably the most heavily used public radio system, and despite the 1930 AM technology, still important to our commercial drivers. The FCC should move it to VHF, but that's for another time and topic. I live about 5 miles away from Briarcliff, and fortunatley cannot hear it. If this came up my block, though, I'd have to sell all my HF ham equipment. Multiply this by thousands, and the safety net that is ham radio would be gone. The internet's nice, but in an emergency we are all just writing on tissue paper. Note also that in many areas, like mine, we have Cable and DSL, so the chances of any BPL takers, unless it was free (snort) is small. Having worked a few ham radio emergency events, often a few volunteer hams are the stitching between dissimilar professional radio systems. You'd be amazed how often agency one can't talk to agency two. It's a trivial thing to use one channel, but governments don't think that way. I agree that the concept of transparent broadband is a great idea...even if it will be used to verify if your HD-DVD player is "legal" and whether the DRM chip in your Vista OS will be allowed to let you copy that CD. BPL will eventually fail due to the business model. The point will be to keep it from destroying the natural resource that is the HF spectrum. Of course, our current administration never met a natural resource they didn't like !
>Apparently, a major source of opposition to BPL is operators of ham radios.
Hams are just canaries in this fight, not villains.
BPL has been shown to cause radio interference to all users, amateur, military, and commercial. Michael Powell, then FCC chairman, squashed a report from the NTIA that said it causeinterference>/a, and the FCC required that frequencies allocated to government use be "notched out." That leaves just us citizens unprotected and ungagged (at least for now).
And before you say that HF radio isn't necessary anymore, and everyone who is anyone uses cell phones (of if they have buckets of money Iridium satphones) take a look at just one of thousands of uses, NOPAC. Last night on 10.148 Mhz (square in the middle of the band that BPL trashes), I heard a Singapore Airlines flight over the Pacific contacting a NOPAC control station in Alaska asking for route planning information, right on the heels of a JAL flight doing the same thing. The NOPAC instructions have detailed accounts of how to use HF radio when over the Pacific, which is what I heard last night.
Finally, the FCC didn't grant any license to BPL systems. Instead, it said that they would be allowed under Part 15 regulations. Those are the same regulations that govern radio controlled cars; in essence, they're allowed to use low power if they don't cause interference and if they accept interference. The NTIA and others argued that BPL was fundamentally different from a kid with a radio controlled car on 27Mhz, because BPL will be widespread both geographically and in spectrum -- occupying the entire area beteween 2MHz and 80Mhz.
The result: a few critical government frequencies get notched out, and everybody else gets told to call the power company and complain "if" there is any problem. And in the few test cases where this has happened, even in test trials, getting the power company to do anything has taken months, and only a few even tried, and of those few that tried, all but about three had to discontinue the project becuase they couldn't resolve the Part 15 complaints.
So yes, it hasn't happened widespread yet, and it hasn't caused widespread problems yet, but don't blame the people who are technically savvy enough to see what's going to happen.
And finally, don't you think it's strange that energy companies are getting a big help from the current administration to get into the ISP business? I mean, it's not like there's any connection between energy companies and the Bush administration, is there?
If you want fiber, push on getting fiber.
If there was a clueless mod, you'd get it. The reason those devices fall under FCC Part 15 is that they are operating on frequencies for which they are not licensed.
Since HAMS are operating under frequencies that they *are* licensed, it is the BPL that would have to accept interference, not HAMS. Under current rules, if someone deployed BPL, and it interfered with HAMS frequencies, the HAMS could have it shutdown under FCC rules.
This is, of course, why BPL advocates want to change the rules. Which is what the current fight is about.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
Shortwave broadcasters are already complaining about noisy power lines. Listen to Allan Weiner sometime at 8:00 PM EDT on Friday evening on his station, WBCQ, at 7.415MHz. Even now he has to filter out a lot of garbage.
Interference from BPL and power line transmission noise are two different things. Transmission noise which has plagued wireless services for decades can be cured with good line maintenance. BPL interference occurs even when the system is operating properly.
BPL proponents claimed BPL was good for fixing transmission noise as utilities had to cleanup the lines which reduced the noise so BPL could work (lower noise = higher signal to noise ratio = better BPL data transmission). This in part was true, but they replaced the transmission noise with an often stronger, more concentrated modulated BPL signal that was even worse than the original power transmission noise. Half-truths abound in BPL press releases and articles, and most of the general public doesn't know any better. The industry has claimed to have fixed the interference problems with frequency notching which usually isn't "deep" enough, or precise enough to prevent problems. Unfortunately journalists (like in the recent NPR report) make it sound like the problem is solved.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .