12Mbps Powerline Broadband Trial Unveiled

An anonymous reader writes "The tiny state of Tasmania in Australia has kicked off the country's first commercial powerline broadband trial. The service is capable of providing Internet connectivity of up to 12Mbps but during trials, it will be limited to 4Mbps. Costs will range from $12 (A$15) to $67 (A$80) per month for speeds between 256Kbps and 4Mbps. Powerline broadband has received wide support from leading vendors including Intel, Motorola and Cisco Systems -- all of whom support an organisation called the HomePlug Powerline Alliance."

Comments

Re:Those MB per month limits are awful

[Verteiron]

Okay, double posts are bad form, but I just saw the text underneath the pricing table: "Speed reduction once data usage reaches 150% of included data (to ensure your bill remains under control)".

So in other words, if you pay for the 4Mb/s at about $80/month, you get 2000MB of free data transfer. So you download at full speed for a little over an hour. After that, every megabyte you download after that costs you a dime. Ouch. And I thought Mediacom had a racket running...

Re:Home Plug?

[fatboy]

Homeplug is the consumer standard for in house data over powerlines.

HomePlug is also the standard that Motorola is using for their low voltage Canopy system. It operates on the 110/220 side of the transformer, not one the medium voltage lines.

Homeplug has actual hardware based filters to make sure it does not interfere with amateur radio operators. It does not merely change the modulation technique like most BPL providers have done to mitigate interference.

Re:Ham radio?

[RokaMoka]

Sadly no. If I'm in California, and I'm talking to a flood victim in New Orleans, the BPL in Arizona will block us. The thing people forget about HAM radio is it is single transmitter, around the world. That can ONLY happen when everyone plays very nice. BPL does not place nice.

BPL plays hell with radio.

[Nethead]

Many, if not all, of the BPL designs that have been deployed to date suffer from a number of technological weaknesses. Perhaps the most critical of these is that BPL is seriously degraded by nearby transmissions from low-powered transmitters from sources like Amateur Radio or CB. In several BPL cities, amateurs have done experimentation that shows that as little as 5 watts of power from a nearby radio transmitter can seriously degrade the performance of BPL. In some cases, the interference logged off a BPL user, requiring a reconnection to the network.

This fatal flaw will seriously limit the way that BPL can be deployed and will decrease the reliability of a BPL system in any area where it is possible that nearby radio transmitters could be operating. Under the FCC's rules, BPL is an unlicensed device that must accept any interference caused to it by authorized radio services. In the past, and through decades of experience, such interference is rare to other broadband services, such as DSL, cable or satellite. However, in all of the BPL areas tested for susceptibility so far, the unshielded wiring that is used by BPL apparently picks up nearby radio transmitters and overload or otherwise degraded the performance of the system. Although this has been seen at power levels as low as 5 watts from Amateur Radio transmitters, Amateur Radio transmitters can use as much as 1500 watts of power, greatly extending area over which BPL will be unable to tune out these over-the-air signals.

See the ARRL.org website for more info. http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/ 73 de W7COM

In the US

[Baener]

Brodband over Powerlines has been offered in the Allentown/Bethlehem area of Pennsylvania USA, since 2004 by PPL electric utilities.

Hello broadband over power lines, goodbye radio

[drwho]

Each time there's an article on BPL here on slashdot, I find it neccessary to point out that it is a destructive technology, making HF radio pretty much unusable.

While you may not think that your neighbor yammering on his CB, or another neighbor listening to broadcast from Radio Swaziland,or listening talk radio on AM broadcast are very important, there are other communications that are also disrupted: HF radio is used by emergency response agencies all over the world. The inadequacy of communications (among other failures of emergency services) was well demonstrated by the recent Hurricane Katrina disaster. BPL will make this worse.

HF radio, unlike cellular telephones and other centralized radio systems, has the ability to comunicate over long distances without any intermediate infrastructure. The is vital for disaster communications where the infrastructure is overloaded or destroyed.

Worst hit would be the poorer nations of the world, where telephone service is often unavailable or unreliable, and much of the communication has depended on HF radio. While the interference at a distance will be less, it will still be strong, very easily strong enough to make a weak signal calling for help in Afria disappear in BPL noise generated in Australia or the US.

It goes both ways: HF radio can also interfere with BPL. I think that, in an area where BPL is interfering with Amateur Radio, that the Amateurs will not hesitate to use more powerful transmitters (if they can afford the electric bill for doing so). These will disrupt BPL, quite easily to the point of being unusable. And I doubt the BPL ISP will let you out of the contract because of such interference! So don't sign up. It's not worth the headache, and the guilt, and angry hams and other angry HF radio users.