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."

Comments

Whoa there Nelly!

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

That's the cheapest, fastest internet connection in the world.

No. It's not the fastet, because it doesn't exist.

To add some perspective, in the states Verizon FiOS currently offers up to 30 Mbps downloads and 5 Mbps uploads starting at $42.99 a month.

Yes, they do. Right now. Who knows what Verizon will be offering when (if) these guys get this network going. Awesome. The US still has better internet access than much of the third world.

Re:Whoa there Nelly!

[asuffield]

Why don't we have better internet access than ALL of the third world, if not the best internet access, period?

Because bad internet access is more profitable. If everybody had gigabit lines to their homes, it would be very hard to sell "faster" business lines to businesses at an inflated cost. By artificially limiting the low end of the market, they inflate the value of the high end, and hold the whole thing together by passing laws to block any competition. Isn't capitalism grand?

Spec needs to be clearer

[kg261]

Well it's not clear from the article if it's 224Mbps for all 60 million users. Also, the premises could have 224Mbps locally, but the end to end a fraction of that.

Re:Unlimited?

[catwh0re]

A fast connection to your ISP, doesn't mean you'll have a fast Internet experience.

While this will no doubt allow the ISP to deliver cache/proxy data very quickly, it will not be financially viable to provide very fast live-internet down this pipe. E.g anything that can be classified as a web-application will probably still be quite average/slow speeds.

The price comes about from using an existing infrastructure, as you know the biggest cost in rolling out a network is the transmission medium. (Especially if it's not your expense to maintain it.)

Re:Could someone enlighten me?

[monkaru]

In much of the world mosques, Buddhist temples and\or Catholic churches are the only places the locals can get a proper education. Ultra high speed internet could be extremely useful to them when divvied up among thousands of students and religious scholars.

bpl is a hoax

[eggled]

Any power engineer worth his salt knows the power lines can be modeled as an RLC network... creating losses. These have been optimized for low frequencies (50-60 Hz). Once you get above 1 kHz, your signal won't propogate more than 500 feet. 1MHz and you're lucky to get 50 feet. BPL doesn't actually use the copper line as a waveguide, but creates a rude radio transmitter in the GHz range, which can cause all kinds of trouble. The reason they're trying this abroad is that it's already been rejected outright in the US.

Re:It'll never happen

[Goody]

Besides, copper telephone lines used for ADSL aren't shielded either.

Twisted pair copper is self-shielding; it's one of the reasons why we use it today in telephony instead of the old open straight wire.