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Electric Companies Get Involved With Broadband
Billosaur writes "The Marketplace Morning Report on NPR has an interesting piece on how electric companies are getting into the high-speed Internet business with 'Broadband over Power Lines', or BPL." From the article: "By purchasing the right equipment power companies can quickly offer Internet service to millions of new customers. There are several pilot projects being launched in the US, including one in the Pittsburgh suburb of Monroeville. That service is being offered by Duquesne Broadband -- a spinout of the local power company.'"
Sure the technology to be able to do this well keeps improving... I'm kinda getting sick of hearing about this and fiber to the curb every few months when it is no closer to wide scale roll out than it was 10 years ago when I first started hearing such ideas.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have both, but please... quit trying to get my hopes up!
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Was this posted by an old Korean?
Is finally being used by electric companies. How novel.
The power line wasn't a giant freaking unshielded antenna! This tehcnology has been effecting communications gear all over the place. Its a very very bad idea in its current form.
http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/
Just what I needed... PSE&G controlling my internet service too. Maybe I would embrace this technology if there wasn't such a monopoly on my power provider?
What kind of "Rolling Blackouts" can we expect from this service?
Where I live (Burlington, VT) the city provides both electricity and fiber optic service. It's Interesting that it was more practical to run new fiber optics throughout the city than to use existing power lines, since the city already owns the electric department.
Bradley Holt
Previous discussion of broadband over powerlines that I've read discussed it as an alternative to wireless or wiring your home...really small networks that then plug into a traditional connection. I'm curious how you would handle multiple users on one line. You're not just running half a dozen or so connections into a hub and multiplexing the signals. The power grid is huge! Along those lines, what about capacitance and interference? Wouldn't those kill the range?
Hopefully, rural power companies will start offering this soon.
No cable and no DSL available make me something something.
Hydro One Telecom Inc, for example, was split out of Hydro One some 6 years ago. Please, somebody find some *new*s to post...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydro_One
or is it the same broadband-over-electricity-lines that we've had in Europe for years?
Nyhetsankaret.com -- det bÃsta av Sveriges Nyhetssido
BPL advocates will tell you that it's not fttp. And it's not going to be at cable speeds for a long while, but has lots of possibilities.
But here are the salient positive points:
1) these guys are by their nature, net-neutral and while they're utilities, they don't live behind ancient telco models
2) reliability is a serious culture within the power community; these guys have trucks and know how to use them
3) the electrical utilities have the largest amount of unused communications easements and right-of-ways in the USA
4) the utilities in the EU are riding this wave quickly; they go everywhere, while the old tired fat ex-PTTs slumber
5) more competition keeps the telco and cable companies honest. We need alternatives.
So, I say: party on, BPL!
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
RTFA you fucking cocksmoker
Why isn't the phone company rolling it out on their cooper lines?
The article doesn't discuss BPL intereferce issue with HAM radio and other related problems. Did this issue finally get resolved, or this battle about to heat up again?
I once had reservations about this technology and the amount of RF noise it would fling out into the atmosphere. However, after having to deal with Alltel for DSL service I will say that it would be the lesser of two evils for me.
The monopolizing that I see going on for broadband pricing is sickening. Cable or telephone based providers see fit to gouge the consumers that can least afford it. I am thinking those that can justify not subscribing to those basic service offerings. Everyone has to have power in this society. Heck, if you don't the state will take your kids away. I think that information access provided by the internet is going to be more and more crucial to people making educated and informed decisions in their life. It should be a national infrastructure initiative. BPL seems the most cost effective way to get that accomplished.
Most power companies are required to buy extra electriciy if you generate more power for the grid than you consume. This usually only applies to folks with solar panels and other sources of power that end up contributing to the grid. They get to watch their power meters run backwards!
I wonder if the same principle could be applied to net data flows! I would love to be paid by the power company for massive file sharing since I would be contributing more to the 'net than I consume.
This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
I would be very happy to have another alternative to Comcast. DSL is not an option in my neighborhood, and broadly available WiFi not even a glimmer. When my only current broadband ISP starts QoS traffic shaping that benefits them, not me, I want a new place to leave them for. After all, with satellite, I don't need them for TV either.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
And they can start with purchasing a power station. I've heard rumors that the internets won't work without electric power.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
...in the boots of the telcos and cable companies. If broadband over the power grid were technically and economically doable, it eliminates the need for telcos if you have voip and for cable with a big enough pipe.
Using the best knowledge of today to create the problems of tomorrow.
Before this can be rolled out, the power companies will want to run a massive national smear campaign against ham radio operators, you know, just to make sure no-one listens to them when they complain about interference.
This sig, aah-ah, is comin' like a ghost-sig...
in the latest QST http://www.arrl.org/qst/ about the FCC ignoring amateur radio ongoing complaints about BPL system interference.k .pdf
new BPL complaint here: http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2006/05/05/100/
system operator response here:
http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/files/COMTe
"What is coax but insulated copper conductor. With Edison's DC delivery methods, tried and proven over a hundred years ago, a single conductor with ground return has always been feasible. Now we will free you from the greedy power companies and their unfair monopolies one and for all. Bwahahaha!"
The combined telcos have scheduled a news-conference for later this afternoon.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I could tell you, but someone already did. In fact they put it in a nice format,and the submitter even made it so you only have to click a link.
WTF do you want, someone to read it to you?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Now I'm scared.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
After all, it's hardly a new idea.
That's shocking!
Come on, this is not hard. Have a housing development of say 500 houses. For the developer to add a community based utility system would b so easy. Add some wind and solar power, to power the peoples houses, sell the surplus, or even buy electricity for the whole nieghbourhood and get a discount deal. Do the same with water, or gas. If you want to have a geeky neighbourhood you could easily and cheaply do this for internet and phone, just run a phat fiber pipe, and run fiber into each house, and provide a nice internet pipe and VOIP on the same line. Bonus points for developers who have a Data Center on location and provide secure backups there.
*Anything* to get competition happening, so we are no longer held hostage to the telco monopolists! This has been around for a long time. It's time to put some beans into this technology and make it mainstream.
Marketplace is produced by American Public Media, not NPR. It often is broadcast alongside NPR shows by your local public radio station, but NPR has nothing to do with Marketplace.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
Why would anyone settle for this kind of service while the rest of the world gets 100Mbps ethernet to their premise or even better fiber at gigabit/sec rates?
BPL puts a whopping huge RADIO SIGNAL on to the power line which then requires a modem at the customer end to pull it back off. This radio signal radiates from the power line on most HF and low VHF frequencies causing severe and harmful interference to other radio services.
Amateur radio communications on these frequencies will be almost entirely precluded. Remember that during hurricane Katrina and most other natural disasters around this country and the world, amateur radio is usually the only means of communication after the commercial services are destroyed. If BPL is operating outside of the affected area, then the people trying to communicate with the affected area will be so interfered with by the BPL that they will be unable to communicate with the people in need.
BPL will have such poor and unpredictable line characteristics to operate into that the best performance expected is at or below ISDN rates of 128Kbps. Do you really want to oblivionate the volunteer, completely independant and non-commercial amateur emergency service for 128Kbps? Do you really think that in the end it will be commercially viable?
Please contact your elected representatives and ask them to support the ARRL's position against this ill and misguided attempt to fool the people into something that is not what it appears to be. Tell them you'd really rather have true broadband over fixed wireless, fiber or other infrastructure like the rest of the modern world has.
http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/
BPL is one of those things which sounds good or at least interesting
at the start, but the deeper you go the less decent it gets.
The problem boils down to the fact that a BPL system emits RF (radio
frequency) energy, causing interference to entities that use those
frequencies. The FCC has been put into an interesting spot here, as
they realize that the problems generated by it are real, but are also
being pushed by the Bush administration to move forward on this.
Ham radio operators are definitely negatively affected by this. Hams
by their nature deal with "weak signals", which the noise generated
by BPL tends to clobber, making many of the "shortwave" (ie, below
30MHz) bands less than useful.
If you care to see a pretty good response to this go to www.arrl.org
and look for BPL.
This is a real horror for hams. Least anyone think that ham radio
is out of date in this era of advanced technology, talk with officials
down south who dealt with Katrina, or in Neq York City on September 11th.
BPL pits big money interests against litterally amateurs, with the latter
group figting back, and being at least partly successful, in getting
the FCC to deal/recognize interference complaints, and getting these
systems cleaner.
What will happen, I cannot say. But I look to systems in Europe
and Asia where broadband exists and doesn't use BPL, and see systems
which offer far better service.
--STeve Andre'
amateur callsign WB8WSF
I realize that a power company would be smart enough to be aware of this and likely provide filters to strip that out for folks who use the service, but how are they going to filter the crap out for those who don't have a data box at their house to strip the signal, and how much would it cost? More importantly, wil lthat cost be an enforced one?
Either way I really don't like the idea at all, even if I never use the thing.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
A little town just west of lansing, MI has broadband over power line set up for residential and business use (it really isn't worth $30 a month for something like 328k or something around there). In the local paper (which is owned by Gannet) it said that the signal is transmitted from lansing to the water tower in Grand Ledge by microwave then is transmitted to receivers on the power line poles then run by the powerline to your house.
No, they're just steam-rollering ahead realizing that they have far, far more potential customers to reach than hobbyists (valuable hobbyists, but hobbyists nonetheless) to put out.
I'd personally like the FCC to put an axe in this idea, but it's never going to happen. Once they get enough of a userbase, it'll be impossible to shut them down politically. Ham radio will just die and the public simply won't know what they've lost because they don't use it themselves.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
your dumb as hell. just because it's there does'nt mean you have to use it. promote inovation. give the telecos something to sweat over. don't piss on the grass because it's brown in the winter. p.s. i'd bet the only thing you could beat an opionon out of is your meat
God Bless America. No, I mean my god not yours.
You have circuit breaker in your attic? Who wired your fucking house?
I doubt they even solved any of the original problems they brought to the table eons ago! The idea is that every OUTLET could have internet access. Everyone who has an existing electricity feed could get internet access (imagine third world countries, etc). You'll notice that the article says that without a "smart grid" it won't work in rural areas. A good chunk of the world is rural...
Might as well invent a square wheel while they're at it.With all that extra bandwidth, these ham radio types can just do their thing over the internet.
I haven't read this article, but for the most part BPL is for solving the last-mile problem. An optical carrier would connect a neighborhood to the central network, with the power lines linking each house to the fiber optic transmission line.
One of the problems with a website like Slashdot is that its editors aren't reliable for perspective on presentation of stories with a history, both in the world and in the site's coverage. BPL has been covered on Slashdot several times, as the electric companies have evolved their business proposition and dealt with technical, economic and political problems. But the story presented here "introduces" BPL without any of that perspective. The new Slashdot story/style presentations do better, at least eliminating pure duplicates, but the nanothin editorial depth leaves out the context that is part of the story, both on Slashdot and in the world. Consider this BPL story, and others, with an itchy google finger.
--
make install -not war
Good idea to check your spelling/grammar when calling somebody dumb, Billy Bob. Another fine product of the education system.
here are several pilot projects being launched in the US, including one in the Pittsburgh suburb of Monroeville.
Monroeville is less than 5 miles from where I live.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Hmm, perhaps some devices attached to ground wires on the powerlines to generate some counter interference are in order as a means of protest...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Asymptote: Always closer, never quite getting there. See: Broadband over Powerlines; BPL
Shouldn't this have its own section and icon by now?
From what I heard the only complainers were the ARRL, who are not the end all and be all of radio transmission.
Slashdot.
"Pr-" "-0n"
Pr0n.
My Mistake, I thought you were referring to The Electric Company.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
BPL seems like a loser of an idea due to interference issues, but we need SOME third party in the marketplace. The game theory works against net neutrality if there are two or fewer players, but it may work FOR net neutrality if there are at least 3. I'm betting on wireless, but I wish the BPL guys well and really just hope the some thrid party gets into the last-mile business ASAP.
... a new technology to provide mains power using a little-known photoelectric principle called:
Power
Originating
Over
Fiber
Or, POOF!
They are still working out some bugs (molten glass, mass sterilizations, etc.) but expect to see this exciting development SOON from your local fiendly Telco!!!
What, me worry?
The only reason for the BPL dups is for all the /.ing brass pounders to figure out who each other are. Considering how damn lame some of the other ham-boards (caugh.. QRZ) are these days, we need to find some place to hang. Seth's board (hamsexy.com) is nice but they have all those damn VE3 kids!
73, W7COM
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
I looks like there will need to be some curtailment of ham activies.
Someone has to stop the guy with a kilowatt on 40 next to the power line.
A longwire parallel to the powerlines would feed quite a bit into them.
What effect would packet or highspeed CW cause?
Which would be the "protected service"?
"quickly offer Internet service to millions of new customers" they say.
This is not true. They can't run the service over high voltage lines.
They have to fiber out to medium voltage (7,200 volts) lines and then offload from fiber ($$) to the unshielded lines.
The lines may be 7,200 volts, but to comply with section 15 the data is transmitted somewhere closer to 1 volt.
Emergency frequencies tend to be low because the low attenuation rate allows for greater travel. BPL being sent at 1 volt attenuates quickly so their workaround is to use EMRGENCY FREQUENCIES to transmit data on the power lines.
Even at 1 volt it is enough to disturb radio and emergency communications because med voltage power lines are basically a big antenna.
The problem with being only about 1 volt is that the signal must be cleaned and re-amplified every few hundred feed (more equipment, $).
medium voltage lines are stepped down to 240 volt drops to peoples homes but the data could not survive this. The result is the need for a CT coupler (yes, more $) to bypass the transformer and again reinsert the signal onto the shielded line.
When all is said and done you have a service that is expensive enough to run that it will no be a rural broadband solution.
At best it will be available to areas that already have a choice between Cable, DSL, Fiber, and soon WiMAX.
For the high maintenance costs of keeping BPL signal leakage from PBL deployments you could just run fiber right to the home.
Also, BPL maintenance and inline equipment = network (read Power) outages.
Besides, internet access is a very step for power companies. By the time they establish data centers, mail platforms etc. there will be a slew of better alternatives that won't cause power outages.
Maybe they should instead focus on providing reliable power service or clean energy.
As for the latest "We can monitor equipment with it" they already have technology in place to do that that. It is simply their latest ploy to get people to sign off on their raping the radio spectrum.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
FiOS
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Solar storms knock out communication satalites, powergrids, and the internet!
Check these guys out.... http://www.currentgroup.com/
...if you have ever had the misfortune of working on phone wiring when someone calls, you know the telephone company already delivers plenty of voltage!
Ring voltage is over 100VAC, which is pretty exciting when you've got your fingers on the wires. Getting the "buzz" in your body and hearing the phones in the house ring at the same time is...well...really...WEIRD!
Please help metamoderate.
It didn't work. The system interfered with the street lights. They started modifying the lamps but then I guess gave up as the system was abandoned.
I can't remember if it was more than just one company that tried it, but Norweb did in my area.
My dad said that they tried for years to make it work at the company he worked for (very large) and, after spending a lot of money, they, and their competition, came to the conclusion that it simply does not work.
It would mean a data line to every household. That is a lot of potential, so everybody has been trying to tap it for years. None has succeded. A small company in Austria is selling it on a trial bases, but they have been sued by the state, because their systems cause interference with police and firerescue radio systems.
BPL is a bad idea for the same reason DSL is not as good as fiber. You're forcing bandwidth where it's not supposed to be. That's always going to lose out to fiber and coax.
Have not seen verified throughput numbers for BPL but would be surprised if they are much better than DSL. And it gets worse with distance.
The power companies are going to be fighting an uphill battle against wireless, fiber and even DSL. My prediction is that it will be an expensive failure...demonstrated by the inability to achieve a subscriber density sufficient to cover costs.
Three-prong power sockets already look like scowling little faces.
How soon until those slits have little pupils that follow you around the room and feed live video to your local Homeland Security office?
I mean [REDACTED BY FALSE BELIEF FILTER. TRUTH MAINTENANCE SERVICES SPONSORED BY NEW BROCOLLI CHEESE HOT POCKETS.]
One of these days, power lines were going to get modulated. There's no St Elmo's Fire that's going to happen, radiologically. Yes, there's more RF. But there's more RF everywhere. Screw up hams? I don't think so. More mu metal? Probably.
It's only the last hundred meters that's going to get much modulation anyway; most of the backhaul is through alternate means. Sometimes fiber, sometimes twisted pairs, sometimes cellular 2.4/5.8Ghz. The WiFi redistribution/cellular concept is a long way from the most popular amateur bands.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
> 2) reliability is a serious culture within the power community; these guys have trucks and
> know how to use them
Right. Guess that is why when Rita smacked us the phones and Internet stayed lit but the power & catv went dark for days. More rural areas went without power for weeks but most kept their phone.
Democrat delenda est
There are so many problems with this, off the top of my head:
1. Power companies don't know shit about ISP operations, at least cable/bell have had fifteen years to start figuring things out.
2. Transmitting anything over power lines induces tons of noise because you're asking a low-frequency transport to cope with a high-frequency carrier. Noise going INTO the electrical system will cause things like power supplies, clocks, motors and many other devices to either work harder (and wear out) because of "dirty" power, or deviate out of sync because they're no longer seeing a clean, predictable sine wave. One early sign of dirty power is when power bricks get too hot, or your laptop's power supply shuts off (voltage/current/temp protection).
3. Noise also leaks OUT of electrical wiring because most of it is only electrically shielded for safety, which involves just a non-conductive insulator. Take that 60hz and crank it up to the 35Mhz range, you need a whole different kind of insulator to keep noise from radiating out the cables like antennae.
I know fiber is a pain in the ass to implement, but we're going to need it sooner or later, might as well get those strands buried and hooked up to our homes instead of sinking resources in half-assed stop-gap solutions like BPL. This is little more than the power companies being jealous of the telecoms.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
What I find most important of this technology is that future devices and computers will be connected as soon as they are powered on. If it's plugged, it's connected.
Tin foil hats on:
Now think Windows Registration and anti-piracy measures, or worms that affect recently installed Windows, goverment control, etc.
Or you can run an external power suply, sure. But how many of us have one?
> Sure the technology to be able to do this well keeps improving...
No it doesn't. There are exactly two types of "Net over power lines"
1. Fiber running along the power poles with HomePlug bringing it down from the pole.
2. Snake oil from the same crooks and con men who push perpetual motion machines. You just can't push significant bandwidth down power lines for any real distance without causing interference. You just can't rewrite the laws of physics, but you can find a VC who doesn't know about them.
Democrat delenda est
Yes, please. Read it to me.
We just finished installing a BPL installation at a condo complex where we own several units. Management wanted to install broadband in every room. My first test was with wireless but because of the construction of the building, concrete and rebar walls between each unit and between floors, this did not work. That left either running ethernet thought the building, running through the phone lines, or running through the exising coax lines. After some estimates and additional testing, we decided on a T1 with BPL to distribute the signal to every room. No changes needed in each unit and the signal is available at every outlet. It was IMHO, a very good application for BPL.
Stewart patented an "idea". He claimed to send data over the magnetic part of the electric signal. No live Demonstrations!! Ran away from Dallas TX.
Statement to Congress
http://www.house.gov/science/stewart_100500.htm/
Wired Article
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.11/media.html /
Media Fusion Website
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.11/media.html /
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
Has it been 3 months since the last time we heard about this yet?
I remember trying this with a friend almost 30 years ago. I can't remember where we read about the idea and a concept circuit (probably Popular Electronics), but we built a two way half-duplex syncronous ciruit that worked anywhere in the neighborhood -- as long as you were on the same side of the step-down transformer. I can't remember exactly how fast it could go, but I seem to recall running it at 1/4 wave, which would have been 15bps. I think that was the fastest we could go without having interference from vacuums and other household appliances. And yes, in those days 15bps was fast enough.
As long as we have commissioners at the highest level of the FCC who are so easily dazzled by smoke and mirrors and baffled by bull shit; we are ALWAYS going to have problems like this. When confronted by the technical facts their response is that 'there is no problem'; 'your technical facts are flawed and open to debate and interpretation'. The simple fact is that BPL is an IP delivery method over the WRONG medium. You don't see the cable television company's wanting to deliver TV over power lines. You don't see the phone company's wanting to deliver POTS service over power lines. Power lines were designed to deliver one thing and one thing only, POWER.
Ever since such notable figures like: Robert Livingston, former Speaker of the House; Terry McAullife, DNC Chairman, leading Democratic fund-raiser and close friend of then-President Clinton; Admiral James Carey, former chair of the Federal Maritime Commission Michael Powell, then chairman of the FCC attended a presentation held by Media Fusion's William 'Luke' Stewart, were dazzled by unprecedented levels of bull shit.
Mr. Stewart claimed his company (Media Fusion) could deliver the Internet over ordinary power wires at exobit plus (billion gigabit) speeds, with end users getting 2+ gigabit connections. The technology was never delivered or demonstrated, and Mr. Stewart was later convicted on money laundering and wire fraud charges. But for some reason, our congress critters rammed legislation through to push deployment of this technology anyway. So, it's been what, several years now. BPL is at it's best, what, 1 to 2 mega bits; has the interference potential equal or greater than ordinary power line interference.
The hams that live in BPL serviced areas are STILL being pummeled by interference; even though the FCC gave endless assurance that interference mitigation would be swift and efficient. As I have stated all along, when we have such gullible and ignorant officials; we will always have ill conceived ventures like this. Do a google on 'William Luke Stewart' and find out for yourself.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
"This is little more than the power companies being jealous of the telecoms."
I don't see why. The last mile is closer for them than it is for the phone company. Most every building has a power transformer nearby. Usually on a pole. In fact I believe the cable and phone company rent usage of the poles from the power company.
Commercial fusion power generation is 20 years from fruition. This has been the state of affairs for the last 50 years, and likely always will be.
By comparison, BPL is maturing much faster - all the timescales are a tenth of those for fusion.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Ambient Corporation is shipping its new X2 system. Runs at 200Mbps on the backbone. Has gig fiber, Ethernet, and Wifi interfaces. Runs Linux. Oh, and a few dozen of them would make a great Beowulf cluster.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
...because there's a right-wing nutjob brigade who floods the FCC with letters every time someone says a strong word on TV. The FCC is complaint-based.
It just so happens that said nutjobs are much more vociferous than the remaining ham community.
Unfortunately, when the next disaster happens and rescue efforts are hindered by BPL interference, I don't see the bible-thumping idiots stepping in with a miraculous communications medium that makes up for it.
Could the power company start to brown-out network providers they compete with for broadband customers?
"The powerline can be used with tiny solar cells on the wires to generate electricity, as they are being laid. We had been wasting the solar energy all along, and this will contribute to the net electricity generation" the spokesman said.
"We are looking into possibility of channeling heat from hotter areas of North America to colder areas like Canada or North USA, through power lines. Afterall they are metal wire and good conductors of heat. This will reduce the electricity consumpsion, and we will have surplus power. Also, we have pilot project ready to use power lines as ropeways", He added, "which will not only reduce traffic problems but make the world accident free."
hilarious
This comment would be funny if it was... funny.
It's been more than 10 years since this 'gosh, golly, gee' story came out. The FCC and amateur radio operators, the FAA, and the Armys, Navys and Air Forces of the world are all on one side saying: NO! It screws up totally HF radio and won't be permitted. Those who whine" 'but I wannit, I wannit' will get a cruise missile through the bedroom window (smack right into the compter). The big reasons it failed before are the same ones why it will fail now. Long range navigation, HF radio (used by international airline carriers, Millitary, etc.) are all totally ruined by this. So thanks for asking, bye bye now!
I seem to recall that current stepping transformers broke the chain and caused any sort of data encoded on the line to be lost in the transition from higher to lower voltages. However, that was several years ago so perhaps someone has found away around this problem?
seems like about the best way to introduce massive RF interference
into the atmosphere -- massive high-power unshielded anteneas
modulated by square waves... blech.
YES, you fucking 'TARD, and with the way my house is GRANDFATHER-CLAUSED INTO THE CITY, I'M FUCKED ELECTRICALLY. WOULD *YOU* LIKE TO TRY EXPLAINING ANY-FUCKING-THING ELSE? Do you even live in Memphis, for that matter, you ignorant asshole? PROBABLY NOT. END OF FILE, ASSHOLE.
Oh, and if you were too stupid to RTFA thoroughly, they mention their system interferes "un-intrusively" now HOW THE FUCK DO YOU PROPOSE THAT WHEN I USE EVERY AVAILABLE SOCKET *PLUS* POWER-STRIPS (therefore using the theoretical max of my room's particular 20-amp circuit breaker,) *WITHOUT* filtering the power line to handle the extra electronic interference? Eh? You can only shove so much down so much copper at so much of a power level, please realize the pure facts (regardless of the inefficiencies of DC over AC) That distances that long are going to cause problems no matter what - even with digital a 1 can be flipped to a 0 when files get transferred. "YEA!!! That's what we have MD5 Hashes for, and Cyclic Redundancy Checks for, BIATCH!" Yea, that's what you say when a bit in your encrypted file won't match with an accidentally "corrupted" bit in an already-hacked checksum, and BOOM, you're infeccted with a worm/virus/trojan, the likes of which you've never known. I've had it happen twice. I'll be damned to let it happen a third time to my tiny game-hint server. You people, as much as I take your adevice, and use your programs, are *NOT* as smart as you seem, otherwise, my server most likely would *NOT* have been hacked so easily, considering I used software you all recommended. Would you all like to explain that to me, while you're modding me down, please?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I live in Fribourg, Switzerland. Our local power company (Group-e), has been offering powerline communications (PLC) here for a few years. In the neighborhood where I live, I can't get cable and ADSL is just to expensive, so I opted for PLC. Big mistake, very big mistake. First the speed is terrible, 386 kpbs. But I'd tolerate it if it wasn't for the terrible stability issues. My connections drops every couple of hours, and sometimes drops for hours on end. Their trouble ticket page is full of little issues like these, as well as the message boards. Coupled with the interference I get on my shortwave radio, it just isn't worth it. I'm gonna cancel my subscription as soon as humanly possible.
Before this turns into Little America, Take A Stand! Do NOT tolerate this abberation of technology, this bastard-child of economics and rhetoric! You want service for your dollar, not prosaic verbiage! Or just chill, and let it be. Lemme tell you a story.... LOL.
-- My favorite thing about OSS-- IS its Militancy!!
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
Here is a good summary of how using existing power lines in your home, and from the power companies, to access network services such as the InterNet, is/may affect such groups as Amateur Radio Operators, EMS and Shotrwave listeners.
http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/
This is a link from within the one above which goes into more detail of BPL specifically.
http://glasnost.itcarlow.ie/~net4/kirwans/bband.ht ml
My question has always been why don't they use the actual AC current that is being transmitted at 60htz INSIDE the wire instead of over the magnetic fields around the wires?
In other words, JUST like the Cable Companies do??
I guess there is a simple reason for this, but from reading these articles, that as usual, this (BPL implementation) is being done ram-rod style by the powers-that-be, with little to no concern about what we think.
The term: 'over the lines', is usually meant, that the data, or power, is actually being carried IN the wire, not OVER, as in the magnetic field.
And yet this term has somehow been convoluted into meaning something different, at least in this extensive subject on BPL.
Why?
I am sure there are other 'better' ways to accomplish this idea.
Their (Powers-that-be) whole 'talk' on this is that we need them to build a whole new infrastructure to become a backbone (carrier) of the InterNet, in order to have BPL fullscale.
My first thought was, well why can't we have individuals have the 'routers' etc. necessary to pull this off in our neighborhoods?
Many have posted here in this thread, mentioning how the power lines act as an antenna...well, why isn't the idea of using this antenna, for what it is, being discussed?
For example, as someone joking mentioned here earlier about a ham operator firing up his transmitter, and it made a modem recycle in a coffee shop that was hooked up to bpl!! lol.
Sooo what about us 'directly' accessing this great-antenna-the-sky?
These ideas are not even brought up, let alone considered as a theory in ANYTHING I have read about this for the last several years-- when it first arose as a controversial issue.
It seems an aweful lot of 'data' can be sent down those thick wires hanging over our heads.
The bandwidth may not be what they are saying is going to be availible using 3mhz - 60mhz, but it seems that it would be at least be as much as what the cable cos are doing with their little coax!! (again, I'm asumming this is being done NON-INTRUSIVLY, as the Cable companies do, by using the actually AC current in the wire, instead of on the 'magnetic' fields outside of the wires.)
Cable companies send our tv, InterNet, and now fon service, over that little wire.
It is 'stepped up' and 'stepped down', several times during its journey..so there is no reason that the power companies cannot do this also.
Unless of course they just want to do this the cheapest and crapiest way possible, so it can be a falliure, other than the billions racked in by the Ceos and their buds.
Some of those high-tension Power wires are at least several notches thicker, and therefore can and do carrry a LOT more amps, than coax cables.
These specfic issue are either not mentioned, or glanced over at every opportunity.
I have a sneaky feeling, that something on the magnitude of p2p or free as in air, is looming on the horizon for us, concerning InterNet service, and the Ceo's are frantic to let us believe other wise.
-- My favorite thing about OSS-- IS its Militancy!!
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
I've said it before and I'll say it again: BPL is Internet Fools Gold. The power companies are going to keep pouring money in to this until PONS gets so far ahead of what's theoretically possible with BPL that they finally give up.
Every power line is an antenna, fouling nearby radio with signals placed on it and absorbing signals from nearby radio and noise. Every transformer is a barrier that requires a rugged powered device to bridge the Internet signal for those four housholds. These are fundamental constraints to which no reasonable engineer expects to find a solution.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
- you must be kidding! many utilities are still using poles and wires, and thanks to Progress Energy, reliability where i live means having one or two powerouts or brownouts a day!
- give me a break!
p.s. BPL sucks
I live in Lebanon, IN, where BPL is just now becoming commercially available. One of the largest benefits of the system isn't being talked about -- IP utility meters. Lebanon Utilities is in the process of installing new electric and water meters that communicate back to the "home office" over these broadband connections. This way, when there's a power outage, they will know about it before anyone calls them, and will know exactly how many homes are affected. They'll also be able to diagnose water leaks or busted pipes easier (by watching for constant draws on the water meters). Plus, they won't have to send out meter readers anymore -- they'll be able to read them remotely.
Personally I believe that BPL will be going through no matter whats wrong with it and all at the expense of profits. Kathleen herself was so behind BPL while she was in charge of the FCC.. I would not at all be surprised to find out that she has a large percentage of her personal portfolio in BPL futures or power companies that have BPL projects and tests in the works. In fact, I wouldn't find it hard to believe that she left the FCC because of a conflict of interest over this issue more than anything. She was not a dumb lady.
Face it folks. I am a licensed ham radio user, and I can hear it on my equipment, other hams I know can and do hear it, and there are demonstrations in video form that demonstrate it; but it never died as a technology because of the potential profits. In fact most of this is now hush-hush because there is so much politics backing it as well. All the research points to big profits for all involved in the BPL industry.
The people here who are bashing those of us complaining, apparently either have absolutely no knowledge of electronics and RF, or are so apathetic to radio in general because they only know the "digital age". Perhaps because they only know of Winamp radio, iTunes, or God forbid;... Windows Media Player radio!
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Except we're talking about new implementations of new technology of which the bsod isn't prevalent ;) For that matter, its been years since I've seen a bad magic number on a linux boot as well. Crash/Error handling has come a long way on all platforms. Nothing is perfect but at least all sides seem to be working on it.
Actually, screw my last comment - I did more reading. http://www.antennex.com/shack/Aug03/plc.htm gives me far more reason to worry, as I do operate a ham radio.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
jus read the BPL blog UPDATES: The new 200 Mbps BROADBAND over POWER LINES Technology: Google, GS, SENSUS,TXU, GE, EarthLink put $230M in Current Communications ~ 10 Mbps Symmetrical speed Broadband over Power Lines Internet service !!!
Hams please read: The new 200 Mbps BROADBAND over POWER LINES Technology: News: DS2 200 Mbps BPL technology is working with ARRL Laboratory to work out BROADBAND OVER POWER LINES Interference Issues !!!!
read some more:
The new 200 Mbps BROADBAND over POWER LINES Technology