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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."
because according to this report, this is sorely needed.
Albuquerque PC
Interesting article. The power companies may be just the competition the marketplace needs to bring down some of the prices associated with having too few (inferior) competitors. Imagine the power company offering a vonage like service as well. They could probably rope a bunch of people on the bill convienence alone.
If you look about the web, Australia has already announce trials in Canberra for it and in some other places the progress, I believe, is more advanced.
I always wondered where this setting was...
It's an interesting technology, for sure. According to the article, the signals are sent over a fiber optic network, whereas I would have expected that the signals would piggyback on the main electrical signal. If this is true, I'm not sure how it is different from the fiber optic lines available from the phone company. Maybe the power company has more lines available?
But I think that the most significant hurdle to all of these broadband technologies is keeping the network running even in a disaster like an earthquake or hurricane. Power lines fall down, are torn off the poles by falling trees, and generally succumb to events that they should not encounter everyday. In a lot of places, power lines are run underground, which gives them added protection from above-ground disasters.
Phone lines, too, are affected by such disasters, though in many places the lines are laid under the earth. However, in a large earthquake like is expected in the Bay Area, shifting land could easily sever those lines, stranding thousands of people.
If my satellite television is any indication, satellite internet is at the mercy of storm clouds. A heavily-clouded storm will typically knock out my satellite reception for a while.
Hopefully we can come up with some way to provide uninterruptible broadband service. Better yet, several ways of providing such a service. I think we are only scratching the surface as to getting ubiquitous broadband service to the entire country.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Cinergy is still running successful BPL trials here in Cincinnati with no complaints or signs of cancellation.
BPL is already available in my area from a company called Current Communications (current.net) They offer a line for 40 dollars a month that is 3mb down / 3mb up independant. For 3mb up, I say fark the ham radio operators. =)
I remember a reading a lot of /.ers talking about how BPL is infinately more feeble in comparison to things like fiber lines and other forms of broadband connections in the works. Now, though, news of BPL comes at a relatively opportune time:
DSL carriers no longer have to share thier lines with everyone else, so all the little guys may whither and die. Here comes a new technology to rescue! And it comes through your powerlines! However...
This idea still rubs me the wrong way when I think that a blackout will leave me without my desktop AND internet access through what's left of my laptop battery...
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
I think the most interesting use of this would be here in the UK, as currently to get any form of internet connection you're pretty much locked in to a telephone company.
If you want an xDSL you have to have a BT phone line, no two ways about it, this means that even if I want to exclusively use a service such as Vonage, or Skype I still have to pay the line rental for a phone line.
If I could get BPL I wouldn't have to have the extra cost of a telephone line, and could freely use Skype, or Vonage for all my calls.
When it comes to underground wires, I can say this much from experience:
1. If they didn't install it underground to start, it's not going to get there any time soon (at least not in the US). I know there are probably exceptions to this rule, but there aren't that many in the vast majority of the country. If lines were put above your head, they're going to stay there.
2. When you have lines that are underground, they get damaged less often, which is a good thing. When they do, though, you can be without Utility['$foo'] for quite some time. I have a friend who lived in a brand new neighborhood with underground cable lines for TV and internet surrounded by people still working with the same old structures. And when something went wrong, it could take up to a month until they could watch TV or check their email in their own home.
So without a fast enough maitenence crew to service them, underground lines can be quite a hazard.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
When I was in the army there were some BPL performed. It was considered a fact that if BPL would be generally implemented the background noise within kilometers or tens of kilometers from powerlines the increase in background noise / interference would considerably reduce the maximum range of man-portable VHF radios.
Electronic warfare would be even more badly hit as the devices used to gather radio intelligence can operate at the level of background interference.
Linz AG, the local electricity provider, sells it, but it's really slow and expensive compared to other ISPs.
The fastest thing you get is 768/375 kbps up/down, costing you EUR 69,- per month. Compared to that, Liwest, a local cable TV/internet provider, gives you 6/1.5 mbps up/down for the same money.
Another negative side effect is that certain radio frequency are being disturbed by it, and Linz AG tried suing people that put measurement results of these disturbances online.
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
If by that you mean that getting broadband internet over powerlines is terribly difficult or expensive, I am happy to inform you that my own ISP here in Portugal has been offering powerline internet for ages at very attractive rates.
:)
http://www.oni220.pt/oni220.htm
I'm told other european countries are also deploying it. The upstream is massive compared to similar ADSL offerings, instead of 8:1 it's a 2:1 ratio! Great for eMule
Powerline internet is a very attractive option in countries where the telephone lines are owned by a giant monopolist telecom.
A very valid statement. Not one that most hams are willing to accept ;-)
But then, hams are pretty vocal about keeping the status quo. The FCC has issued a statement that they intend to remove the morse code requirement from all levels of ham radio licensing.
It's a firestorm in the hams-on-Internet world, as some are extremely vocal (with very poor grammar) about keeping "the rif-raf" out with the hurdle of a morse code test for the HF bands. You'd think the sky was falling...
The FCC is discussing what kinds of tasks show that one is able to safely and lawfully operate a radio. Meanwhile, some curmudgeons want their little hobby to remain "elite" in their minds and I suppose having it die out is about as "elite" as you can get, eh?
My other option, and I am not trying to be funny here, is to latch onto a neighbors wireless broadband... That is the ultimate in billing simplicity, no bill! Plus, savings of $40 a monthx12= almost $500 which of course, would be two months payments on basic transportation, or almost a months payment on my truck... Gosh, sometimes being honest isn't easy...
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
querist wrote: If those power lines go down there will be no interference, but what if they are still up and there is a major emergency?
Er...if BPL is up in said emergency, and ham fails, then why not just use the BPL connection?
Also, consider that once BPL comes around, it probably won't be long before the same company sells digital phone over the same lines. Therefore, there will be internet and phone communications as long as BPL signal is up, and if lines or the signal are down, then ham can cut in.
Then, Gorkon wrote: The BIG reason power companies want BPL is so that THEY can use it for reading your meter. They want to make your electric meter to be adressable and able to be read over the internet. They also want to have teh transformers and what not be able to report their status over it as well. BPL is about cutting some costs for electrical companies and it's just a bonus that they can add ISP to thier hat as well.
Sounds great. I'd rather have them read my meter over the internet than have them snooping around in my yard. That's better privacy. Also, while meter readers will be out of a job, it will create IT jobs -- and IT labor demand benefits me, as well as many other slashdotters.
And if I could get some competition for cable internet, which is the ONLY broadband available in my rural location...that sounds like a win-win-win situation! Damn the ham, full speed ahead!
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
i bet they would price it the same as the competition - maybe 5$ less. right now many locations (at least in, near and around my area) only have DSL or cable so it is hard to get companies to compete if they dont *have* to. if it is the same cost or cheaper than cable i would switch. hopefully enough other people will too. once the local companies lose enough subscribers there should, hopefully, be a price war.
always mosh clockwise
The problem with apparently all BPL implementations (other than one Motorola designed system) is that they are inherently RF polluters.
Under U.S. law, BPL is a non-licensed user of the RF spectrum. Licenseholders in the Amateur Radio Service (ie hams) are licensed users of the spectrum. Licensed users are protected by law, from harmful interference from non-licensed users. Under longstanding law, a non-licensed user is required to eliminate intereferrence to licensed users, and must tolerate all intereference from licensed users.
BPL attempts to run RF energy through the (generally) overhead power lines. Despite all the armwaving and mumbling by BPL promoters, overhead powerlines look to RF exactly like antennas. The BPL signal is radiated everywhere the power lines run. That is just the plain physics of the situtation.
All of the BPL trials that I have read about have resulted in significant harmful interferrence to licensed users of the RF spectrum. Also, there are fairly consistent reports that BPL is disrupted by RF transmissions at even relatively low power levels.
To actually comply with the law and avoid intereference, BPL operators would have to notch out all licensed frequencies. Since the entire RF spectrum is licensed, except for a few narrow chunks reserved for unlicensed use, this would pretty much kill the whole scheme.
Because the lines are leaking RF radiation (and acting as (good?) antennas), what is stopping the equivallent of wardriving for BPL? In theory, couldn't you just set up a van under a powerline somewhere? If both of the above are true and knowing the current state of wireless security (AES, etc.), what will be done to protect content and access?
A weak signal right on top of an antenna will swamp a powerful one at a distance if the power levels are equal at the reciever. I can cripple a Ham or CB setup by simply leaving a little 9v powered transmitter (in the case of CB, a walkie-talkie dead-keyed on the channel of most offense...) nearby. You won't be able to hear ANYTHING on the reciever wherever you do this to- it was a common fix for some idiot running a Linear being a problem on the CB band- they could get out, but they couldn't recieve over the little walkie-talkie on their fav channel. They'd think there was something wrong with their rig and quit doing it typically.
What the real big problem is that the BPL systems are largely interfering with a piece of spectrum that has really good propagation characteristics. It's used by everyone for emergency communications worldwide in the case of a disaster; not just Hams have a problem with this- FEMA and other orgs like them does too.
What pisses me off about all of this is that there's no real need for this BS- BPL can be done, done well, and it won't interfere with any critical services when it's done.
Corridor Systems has developed signal launchers and repeater systems to allow them to transform each line on a pole into a 10+ Mbit segment using 802.11 technology. This is accomplished by turning each of the lines on a power pole into a G-line waveguide (yes, you CAN do that sort of thing) that propagates the microwaves from an 802.11 system along the surface of the wires...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I like your wording -- THEIR airwaves. Yes, the HAMS have first dibs on much of the contested bandwidth (after the military, of course).
Hams use only 10% of the bandwidth. The rest is military, aeronautical, maritime, government, and shortwave broadcast.
Something to keep in mind is that BPL doesn't actually use the wireless spectrum, it pollutes it because it can't keep the frequencies it uses within its medium (like cable and DSL). Otherwise, BPL could probably vie for a licensed frequency allocation. So, it's really just an intruder in wireless spectrum due to a bad design.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Now I'm asking this because I sincerely don't know. Maybe you don't either, but you obviously know alot more about this sort of thing than I.
We have fairly extensive BPL in Japan. Why has that not already wiped out the short wave frequencies in the US?
Is it because our power grid is different?
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.
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."