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Broadband Over Gas Lines — a Pipe Dream?
prostoalex writes, "USA Today says we might see some progress in broadband over gas pipes, as startup Nethercomm (warning: Flash site) is working on the technology to deliver broadband Internet over this medium using ultrawideband radio. According to the article: 'Broadband in Gas would require installation of an ultrawideband transmitter that's linked to an Internet backbone... at a gas company's network hub. A receiver would be placed at a customer's gas meter. Build-out costs are about $200 per household, Nethercomm says. By contrast, broadband over power lines costs about $600 per household, while phone and cable TV networks each cost well over $1,000 per home to build.'" The article ends on a downbeat note. The upcoming trials that Nethercomm touts are difficult to confirm: "We're intrigued by the technology, but we never got that far in our discussions," says a gas company spokeswoman. And the ultrawideband chip company that had been working with Nethercomm, Freescale Semiconductor, has turned its attention to other projects.
I do, however, have some concerns. What if one of my big down loads clogs up the pipe? Will the gas build-up, resulting in a dangerous explosion? I don't want to explode the internets.
Come ON! That's no way to move data. It's not futureproof by any stretch of the imagination and not scalable. I MIGHT see it working in a historic district or something where you can't get facilities in place but that's a real stretch. Gas companies want a piece of the broadband pie and that's it. They'd be better off just setting up wiMax towers. At least then they could tap the mobile market. Twisted pair, coax and fiber are mediums designed to move data (I mean signal, excuse me) in one way or another. This ultra wide band nonsense is no solution for an exponentially expanding demand for high bandwidth services. Just think... one giant collision domain! I see the theory but come on, this is just too far fetched.
Just another grab for VC money to burn, and when it's gone, people will move on to another "pipe dream" ...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
How well does this work over plastic gas lines, like those installed underground for new construction?
How about broadband over cable or broadband over phone lines and be done with it already. Jesus, what is the obsession with running broadband over every goddamn media we can think of? Broadband over power lines, broadband over gas lines, broadband over cow farts and yodeling. Sheesh. The problem has been solved, move on.
Well, if the summary is to be believed, it cost $800 per household to build out.
(i) $800 saved per customer x 1 gazillion customers = 800 gazillion dollars saved
(ii) 1 penny saved = 1 penny earned.
(iii) $1 saved = $1 earned
(iv) 800 gazillion dollars saved = 800 gazillion dollars in profit.
The thing about this is that most places that have a gas infrastructure in place -- dense cities -- probably already have extensive broadband infrastructure in place already. If, however, you want to do a lot of new connections, say addressing underserved poor neighborhoods, if this cost differential was real, and the system worked, it could make a big difference.
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While you're at it, what about broadband over phone lines?? Tsss.... That's just stupid.
The main chip developer is now working on other projects .... the gas company involved was unable to finish testing ... but the build out is cheaper then other solutions ... so why is the chip developer now working on other projects and the gas company involved still not testing ... sounds like more pie in the sky to me
Works for Netflix: 1.4 million movies per day, 7.5 gigs on a DVD: over 10 million gigabytes per day, about a terabit per second. And that all goes out on trucks. But the latency sure sucks.
Here's why: even with spread-spectrum, high bit/hertz counts, it's not going to get close to what's already available, today, with fibre. And the cost/drop is lower than is quoted for fibre distribution to the home-- when it's done with symmetrical IDFs along the way.
If you put fibre in 20 years ago, you can still use the latest gear to get the fastest available connection, whereas each wireless technology has had about a six-year life, thus rendering capital asset deployments poorly in the case of wireless. Add in security goofyness, incompatible standards, and broadband over gas pipes looks like a pretty poor value proposition both in terms of capital cost as well as product life.
Next?
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