Slashdot Mirror
Unique Broadband Over Powerline Project Planned For Mosques
Lucas123 writes "Broadband over powerline (BPL) provider Velchip is heading up a project that will offer 60 million very unique network users an unlimited high speed Internet connection of 224Mbps at a cost of only around RM5 ($1.58) per user per month. That's the cheapest, fastest internet connection in the world. The network is slated for use in the $14 billion 'Smart Mosque' project, which will be rolled out over three years in Indonesia and will link together 400,000 mosques. To add some perspective, in the US Verizon FiOS currently offers up to 30 Mbps downloads and 5 Mbps uploads starting at $42.99 a month. BPL modems use existing electrical power lines to deliver high speed Internet access and data transmission."
30Mb/s doesn't sound like much, if you're after the world record... A lady in Karlstad (Sweden) had her son install(*) something a bit faster: 40Gb/s. (article in Swedish: http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.153268). Although she seems to have used this opportunity to do much more than dry her laundry. * I think the initiative came form the son, not the old lady.
Broadband over power lines is an extraordinarily bad idea.
It might just about work in a country where there is no radio or TV broadcasting or mobile telephony to interfere with, and no panic about the effects of stray RF waves on the human body.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Probably because the Mosque doubles as Town Hall and general purpose public building in many parts of Indonesia. I think this is a great way to enlighten people and broaden their experience of the world.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
You might be surprised to learn that "square waves" aren't traveling as is on the lines... they are being modulated in a way that makes them less susceptible to noise, and span across a limited bandwidth... this has the side effect of making them look more like a finite combination of sine waves. Besides, copper telephone lines used for ADSL aren't shielded either.
Sigs are for the weak.
I live in the deplyment area in Virginia. Here is the U.S. map: http://www.bpl.coop/deploymentmap.php It is funded partly by the old Rural Electrificatio Agency of the 1930's! Its successor agency actually, in the Ag Dept. The problem of interfering with radio, especially ham readio, was supposedly fixed by "notching of" certain frequencies.
:) I'll try to find the link.
But... deployment here is three years behind schedule. Customers of two substations have it, but I don't know how well it is working. The company claims some equipment problem.
Rural users are really looking forward to this, if it works, or any alternative to satellite. The electrical co-op (non-profit utility, like a credit union compared to a bank, established in the 1930's) said the price would be $25/month. Satellite is $40 with terrible contracts and equipment costs. Not to mention gamers cannot live with the 0.7+ second lag.
There is no alternative in rural areas, where our cell service is marginal. Dialup with images off has been fun! More important than images off is selectively blocking Flash.
Deployment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_line_communication#Deployments But see the next section, "Concluded Deployments" with a long list of place where BPL has been dismantled.
As for the tech. aspects, note you can run internet over a fence wire.
Okay, then you're just wrong. Telephone lines are neither; their loop system is almost like a balanced signal, but not close enough to actually prevent interference, and they broadcast a very strong electromagnetic signal that you can pick up with sensitive radio equipment from a few tens of meters away (or with a couple of transistors and a 1.5v cell at a distance of a few cm). Whether or not the cable is twisted has no impact on this. Interference is a very real problem with telephone lines, and the only reason it doesn't affect radios is because it doesn't use those frequencies.
Save one province, Indonesia does not run on Islamic laws.
I, as well as many others I'm sure, have submitted numerous news stories to /. about the flagrant bias toward BPL and the facts being covered up by the FCC. Oddly, none ever get posted. Mod me troll, I don't care; I think it's obvious what side of the issue the /. mods are on.
http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/
I think you're confused about what direction the interference is prevented in. It tends to allow the cable to be shielded, protecting the signal on the cable itself, not to shield the cable from leaking/emitting signal. And it really doesn't work all that well. If you've ever used a fox and hound on a bundle of cables to figure out which is which, you'll notice that it bleeds over to other cables pretty badly, and bleeds to other pairs in the same cable horribly.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.