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.

Comments

Good that they're finding other uses

[Scareduck]

for those soon to be empty pipes.

YES! I could totally do that!

[Anonymous Coward]

I could transmit huge bandwidth via gas pipes ... as long as they were straight. Any round pipe could be used as a circularly polarized waveguide. Of course, getting the microwaves to go around corners is a little trickier. Reading between the lines of TFA, they seem to be thinking that if you blast enough power you can get a signal through. That's true as far as it goes but I presume the customers wouldn't be given kilowatt amplifiers so the effect would be in one direction only.

I'm skeptical but I've been around long enough that if I think something can't be done, someone will eventually do it and I'll have egg all over my face. I've got my doubts though.

Re:It's a series of tubes!

[coolgeek]

IIRC, the Gas Company around here (So. Cal.) has been replacing a lot of those tubes with this orange plastic-looking stuff. Something about it being more reliable when the earth shifts, as it tends to do around here. Don't think that's going to transmit a radio signal very well.

Re:Gas tubes.

[networkBoy]

I never thought of it that way (re: Netflix), but that is a good point.
Back to the station wagon full of tapes eh?
-nB