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IBM Bringing Powerline Broadband Back?
KindMind writes "IBM, in partnership with International Broadband Electric Communications, appears to be bringing back
powerline broadband back from the dead.
This time, the idea is to build out in rural areas not currently serviced by broadband, and isn't for competing with other broadband solutions.
From the article: 'Their strategy is to sign up electric cooperatives that provide power to sparsely populated areas across the eastern United States. Rather than compete toe-to-toe with large, entrenched cable or DSL providers, IBEC is looking for customers that have been largely left out of the shift to high-speed Internet.'"
This will also capture the market on all those people who live too far from any hub to get DSL and have free/stolen cable so can't get that!
RFC3251 - Electricity over IP
I don't know for sure, but it strikes me that having a big tech player like IBM behind it will make it a lot more likely to succeed. And yes, it's very much needed -- much of rural North America (I'd guess somewhat over half the total land mass outside of metro areas) has no practical broadband available, and no hope of ever being in range of cable, DSL, or even fixed wireless.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I hope that the swaths of America that have sucktastic access to conventional infrastructure weren't planning on using ham radio for anything...
Techdirt recently asked if we could finally declare BPL officially dead. I guess not!
There was great concern in the radio control modeling community about potential interference from BPL. In fact, a significant amount of fields are underneath or near these powerlines in the "wasted" space where no one wants to build houses. I recall in 2004 or so there being significant email/forum traffic, particularly from those clubs with sites very close to powerlines or from RC Glider pilots that fly long distances from view, toward the horizon, where planes are susceptible to inteference. It was predicted that there was plenty of potential for concern.
Apparently with the concept dying off, so did the concern from RC pilots. I found a post as recently as 2006 where there was found to be little cause for concern (gmarc.com) using a spread spectrum analyzer.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
Some of the powerline broadband manufacturers were able to produce systems that didn't interfere with public safety and amateur radio.
This is necessary, since even a distant powerline broadband system can interfere with emergency communications - the signals skip off the ionosphere and around the whole world, and sometimes contacts by legitimate radio operators can be made at astonishingly low power - meaning that the power line carriers probably have the potential for worldwide interference.
Earlier this year, ARRL won a suit against FCC that will lead to more realistic parameters for interference. The previous ones applied a single-point interference specification made for consumer electronic devices to any point on a wire, and of course over the total length of the wire the interference power was much higher than the spec.
The problem is that power lines are not like telephone lines or coaxial cable. Telephone lines are carefully balanced so that they cancel out much of the interference they would otherwise generate. Coaxial cables have their own shield. Power lines are driven in unbalanced mode when RF is injected into them, and thus act just like long antenna wires, and they radiate a great deal of any RF sent down them. No amount of signal processing can fix that.
Why not use WiMax? It's higher bandwidth, requires less infrastructure overall to install (since you don't have to bypass transformers, etc.) and works for mobiles. Pretty much every business that has invested in BPL for home internet delivery has failed.
The broadband competition in those areas will end up being between WiMax and cellular.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Okay, there's two problems with this, there always have been, and they still aren't practical to solve. The first is transformers. The second is interference.
Transformers: They have a resonant coupling frequency. Try to pass high frequency RF through a power conversion transformer and you get scrambled eggs on the other side. So at every point along the line where you meet a transformer, you'll need an RF pass-thru. These aren't cheap; They need to be lightning resistant, fail safe no matter what (otherwise people die -- no joke here), and in general very well designed. A typical loop is going to see maybe 2-4 step-downs from the plant to your house. At least one RF bypass will need to be installed for each customer, along with whatever CPE is required to get the signal.
Interference: High frequency RF tends to degrade quickly. And above 800 MHz (someone who's an EE, correct me if I'm wrong on the threshold for skin effect) it won't even "stick" to the lines. Because these lines are unshielded aerial lines running in one direction for miles, they make awesome antennas. Which would be great, except... FCC regulations dictate no harmful interference. So any signal being sent down those lines is going to have to be very low power to avoid becoming an omelette with another signal... like say, emergency services. Shannon's law people -- you've got 800 MHz to deal with, a low power signal, and it needs to travel along an antenna some tens of miles along, sucking up every stray RF in the neighborhood. Can you say signal degregation? Any signal you push over that line had better have a helluva lot of error correction. Given it tops out at 3 megabits per second, on a shared link... with 800 MHz of bandwidth to work with... That should give you an idea of just how much the Suck factor is (Low Q for you techies)
So, great article, I applaud IBM for making the effort, but unless you've got some really nifty new electronics, like a DSP from hell, I don't see this being anything but a money sinkhole. Comcast may suck, but they've got a few gigahertz to work with and no FCC restrictions... Just really bad management, which is the only thing making this even remotely practical.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
The article I read this morning stated that this was only going to be used for grid monitoring, not for, as this piece of drivel states, rolling BPL out into rural areas.
BPL is dead. They can't fix the problems inherent to broadband, IE, feedline radiation.
Amateur radio is MORE important than the internet, sorry to say...
--Toll_Free
If you go in saying you won't compete with any of the traditional broadband providers you are likely to have a lot less trouble gaining licenses and that sort of thing. This goes for any country that's ruled by lobbyists. If you go in saying you want to destroy AT&T and Comcast you will have every legislator, regulator and special interest group going out of their way to make life hard for you.
I am an amateur radio operator, so I've heard a lot of pros and cons against BPL. Aside from the obvious and well worn HF interference issue, it was my understanding that BPL actually isn't great for rural areas because the distances over which it will work well are way too small. In other words, it needs a fiber connection to feed the powerline grid for a small area. Each area of distribution has to be fed by another fiber run. Seems to me like WiFi or WiMax are much better alternatives for rural areas. And what about the new whitespace frequencies that the FCC recently approved? Wouldn't this make wireless even more attractive?
But wouldnt it just be cheaper to run fibre lines longside the existing power lines?
1. Defeat the interlock on the door of your microwave oven.
2. Insert head.
3. Push button.
Voila! Scrambled eggs!
Bruce Perens.
We have a cabin in the mountains, with no power and no phone line. Power has been an option we've been thinking about, but expensive. But no phone line and forest basically means no internet period... powerline broadband would be pretty cool.
Unless they solve the noise problem, I doubt this will go very far. To much induced noise will splatter every radio, commercial, amateur or other.
Now I can control my wife's electric "back massager" when I'm away!
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Neither major candidate spent much time campaigning in NY, LA, or Houston during the general election. The electoral landslide was a result of the swing states, not the major population centers.
FWIW, 52% is the most we've seen since 1988, when Bush Sr. got 53.4% - and 426 electoral votes! What does any of this have to do with the "media market"?
I'm truly puzzled as to how they think they can make any money given the infrastructure challenges. Pretty much everyone in rural Alberta has multiple wireless providers in range. And there's no interference to the amateur radio or emergency services radio systems as there is using BPL.
BPL can never work because:
Line Loss: The power lines are designed to carry 50/60 Hz power. They are woefully inefficient at higher frequencies (BPL
frequencies are up to 1,000,000 times higher). The high Loss as H.F. means that data repeaters are needed every few poles.
Radio Interference: The H.F. bands are chock full of licensed users, many of them Emergency Services. Because the power
lines are so unsuited to carrying H.F. signals, the result would be catastrophic interference both to and from these
legitimate services. Note that Emergency Services use H.F. because they have no alternative to reliable long-distance
communications.
High Noise Level: The Power lines are horrendously noisy. This high noise level (again) requires repeaters every few poles.
Poor Bandwidth: To prevent interference between repeaters, alternate line sections must use different frequency bands.
Because the H.F. band is less than 30 MHZ wide (especially when you avoid aircraft frequencies, etc). The available
bandwidth is hopelessly insufficient to provide a community with a broadband Internet service.
Latency: Because so many repeaters would be needed, the total latency makes the circuit unusable for services such as VOIP,
etc.
Cost: BPL requires a very large amount of very expensive line plant. It must be capable of withstanding direct lightening
strikes and can only be serviced by trained Line Staff. To work on the gear, the line usually has to be be shut down.
Because of the high costs, BPL is particularly unsuited to servicing rural areas.
I remember hearing about this from some IBM guys two or three years ago... and with this exact same concept.
Coaxial cable lines will not radiate that much interference. The powerlines act like giant antennas. It simply won't work. Might as well still be using broadspark signals.
Most of Eastern Washington and Oregon, Northern Idaho, and almost all of Montana would probably fall in this category, as well as much of Wyoming and the Dakotas, and vast stretches of the southwest states.
It is anything BUT an "elusive market"!
The only reason IBM is looking for Eastern regions that fit this bill is because the grid distances are shorter. It is not because such people are hard to find.
I live in the eastern part of Cincinnati, OH and have had BPL for years. It rarely goes down (less often than RoadRunner did) and is great. The strange thing about is that I get faster upload than download. I think it's about $40/month for 2Mb/s download and around 3.5 Mb/s upload. ONly service problem I've had was when a recent hurricane knocked out %90 of our grid; power came on before the data did.
They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!
BPL is not an efficient way to send and receive HF radio frequencies. sort of like sending water thru a soaker hose! A Rural network will interfere with many services including including Marine, Aircraft, Ham and rural fire departments still on the low VHF band. WiMax and WiFI like services with a fiber backbone might be more cost effective. Or CATV like coaxial cable backbone might be cost effective.
There are a lot of ways of getting high speed internet to rural areas while not putting it over the power lines. Its bad enough killing AC hum out of just about everything. If they were willing to shield the power lines (COAX) then I'd say ok, otherwise, it was a really bad idea before, and just saying 'oh limited use' is still noisy, and as with all businesses, 'oh limited use' really means (as always, as in its always been this way) 'oh limited use....today'. Its like the US government saying 'oh the Manhattan Project and all of this nuclear stuff is just to end the war fast, after that we quit. No sparky, once the genie is out of the bottle, we go big and go hard. Keep it in the bottle. Use satellite, or microwave towers with wifi connection points. There are dozens of ways of getting high speed broadband to rural areas without killing the HF radio band (and all the peril it would bring to international shipping, airlines, etc.)
Well, I'm a satellite customer in rural Wisconsin, and I'm ecstatic at the news of any possible break from being screwed in the ass by my satellite provider. Satellite companies take full advantage of the fact that rural customers have no other option if they want anything faster than dialup. I will be simply delighted to crawl out from under HughesNet.
If this ever even happens in my area.
I'm not gonna hold my breath, but this is very good news for me. I feel like dancing.
I'm a member of Blue Bonnet Electric Coop and as a member/owner of it, all I can say is, "Get your happy-asses out here and set that shit up." Fuck, I own over 5 acres of land, I'll sign an easement deal with them to allow a mini-NOC to be setup if it will help sweeten the deal.
Living with 26.4Kbps dial up is slow death... If the cattle piss on or kick over a junction box, it's lights out.
The prices for satellite access are obscene and bandwidth caps are a real buzz kill. As for cellular, my house is in a dead zone, so no 3G or WiMax options.
I for one, just got DSL several months ago. The phone company didn't want to give it to me - I am at the extreme distance from the hub. I'm paying for the lowest speed they offer, but they have given me a "free upgrade" because I am so far away. After the upgrade, my speeds can drop to as low as 1/2 the slow speed, up to almost the upgraded speed. Many of my neighbors STILL CAN'T GET broadband, at any price! Powerline transmission makes sense - the infrastructure is already in place! All that need be done, is set up the servers, sell some "modems", and the ISP's have millions of new customers! (yeah, I realize there is some finetuning to be done, but the point is, the infrastructure exists, now)
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Novell got into this market with SNAP. It sounded like a good idea. From what I recall, the problem was that you had to have repeaters all over the place to get around line filters, transformers, and other such items. You add all these costs together and it's hard to make a profit.
The high speed data looks like line noise to most filters, which are all over the place. The power get reconditioned when the power flows through transformers you see all over the place as well as many other pieces of the electrical puzzle.
Where I live, we have a power loop. I don't know the technical term. There is a lot of construction here. There have been times that they have disconnected power flowing one way down the highway and it starts flowing from the other way because of this equipment. There is a momentary power outage. Your data traffic will have to be able to handle this too.
If you just look at power lines as a single big wire, it sounds good. But to make it actually work in a way that your Eve-Online players aren't going to bitch about drops and lag you have to invest a lot, bringing the price to cosumers up.
Metro WIFI sounds like a good idea too. Just drop a lot of AP's everywhere and free internet. It's just not that simple.
take out everything from baby monitors to ham radio to public service radio. this idea needs to die, hard, forever, period. you can kick 48 ports of DSL into a rural area for $2500 plus 1 to 8 T1 lines of trunkage from several equipment vendors. if you have DLC phone service in the area, you replace the control card and the line cards you want DSL on, and run some trunks out, and it's done. no DSL in rural areas is a cop-out. cost less to provide it than it does to send lawyers to a PUC hearing.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
"Dont worry people, we won't compete with DSL." WTF, please do. I'm surrounded by DSL but it won't come to my house. I would like some option besides satellite and dial-up. Anything that make AT&T more competitive would be a good thing. I hate lobbyists.
Alberta east of the rockies is fairly flat, same as Saskatchewan next door (where I am), so line-of-sight wireless works very well. I know, I use Sasktel's wireless service myself, and there's another company offering it in my area, though Sasktel stomps them in terms of speed and price (i pay $60/month for 2Mb/256Kb (You could get 10Mb/1Mb DSL in the city for that price, but this beats the hell out of dial up and satellite), whereas the other guys charge over $100 for that).
Also, they recently (this summer) started upgrading the 1X cellular network to EV-DO (which was previously only in Saskatoon and Regina), which makes that a practical option for home broadband access (you can get 3Mb/512k out of it optimally, which is quite obtainable with a decent fixed antenna), as Sasktel offers an unlimited (where "unlimited" means the monthly limit=TRANSFER_RATE*3600*24*31, none of this "unlimited is 5GB" nonsense) plan for $75/month
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Thoughts:
The fiber has to be run almost the whole way to your house anyhow. If you're too far away for DSL, you're going to be close enough for BPL?
People are allowed to think that it's just like getting your electrical power into your house. It isn't. The BPL signal won't survive the trip through the transformer on the pole. That's why it has to go on the High voltage lines. Fortunately, the isolation devices will never ever fail and send that high voltage into the house.....
The BPL signal is not robust, since there is no shielding on the wires. Transmitters near the BPL frequencies can wipe out the digital signal with ease. Experiments show a watt or so will do it.Ham Radio or Military Affiliate Radio stations will not have BPL customers around them.
BPL also causes a lot of interference to other services on nearby frequencies, some of which are involved with emergency communications, and others such has long-haul airline flights.
BPL is a part 15 unlicensed service, which in a nutshell means that it has to accept interference from licensed devices, and must not interfere with licensed services.
So there is a reason why in pretty much every public testing of BPL, they have given up on it. It's a real non-starter. But like in the "Chucky" movies, the little bugger keeps rearing it's ugly useless head.
Why is this even on SlashDot?... Why is this even on Slashdot?...Why is this even on Slashdot?
Nothing is worse than satellite internet. I'll gladly sign all my family up who live in the boondocks.