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FCC's Duplicity On BPL Revealed
eldavojohn writes "Ars has a summary of the curious events surrounding the death of broadband over power lines (BPL). We've discussed BPL's trials and advances here many times. The Federal Communications Commission's go-ahead was halted last year by a federal court, after a suit by the American Radio Relay League over claims of unacceptable radio interference from BPL. The DC Court of Appeals judge noted, 'There is little doubt that the [FCC] deliberately attempted to exclude from the record evidence adverse to its position.' The ARRL's FOIA request to obtain non-redacted documents finally bore fruit under the Obama administrations more open FOIA guidelines. The ARRL's preliminary analysis of the released documents point out a few critical areas where the FCC redacted data that is clearly adverse to the claims of BPL proponents. By rights, this ought to lay BPL to rest once and for all." A story at Broadband Reports notes that BPL is dying on its own, as most of the vendors who had been testing it "have since moved on to promote smart electrical grid functionality."
BPL isn't really (and never was) about delivering Internet service over electric lines. It was geared more towards smart power meters that the utilities could read remotely rather than sending an army of meter readers out to every house in the country once a month to read the meters.
it's a conspiracy!
You don't need much bandwidth to read out a few digits....
The 'B' in BPL stands for Broadband, which was definitly intended to be used to send consumers large amount of porn....
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
The FCC picks winners and losers all the time. Ask the folks who had private mobile radio licenses when the FCC decided that the frequencies could be better utilized - by Nextel. Most of those licenses were for local emergency services, and we all know how well Nextel worked for them when the time came.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Broadband may mean high bandwidth in most marketing contexts, but it also means sending multiple signals over a single line. I doubt that they're sending those digits modulated into the 60hz AC current so they're multiplexing the line in a broadband fashion. Broadband may still apply if each house has its own meter frequency that is sent over a single trunk line coming from the transformer up to the local power station regardless of the bandwidth used.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
*This* is why I don't want the government running businesses (mail, trains, hospitals, schools). The people in power use that power to censor information contrary to their personal beliefs, and they push agendas we are forced to adopt (like the "feel good" philosophy that is failing to teach our kids anything). It's a rigged system, a monopoly, not freedom or liberty.
The FCC did exactly the same thing with the Whitespace/TV Band devices -
- they ignored testimony and in-the-field research that demonstrated such devices interfere with television reception. They shoved through the okay on this, and in a few years, over-the-air reception of television (or FM radio) will be near-impossible. Instead people will just see/hear digital hash because the teenager next door is surfing on channel 8 with his Ipod. The FCC has essentially killed free-to-view TV/radio.
I hate monopolies, whether it's a private monopoly like Comcast or a government one. A free market is preferable in almost-all cases. We need the FCC monopoly over the radio spectrum, but that doesn't mean we need to extend FCC-style corruption to other areas. We need fewer monopolies, not more.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
PS, porn from the power company, that is both shocking and electrifying... I'm sure I'm going to catch some static from that, but I couldn't care watt happens to my current karma because of these charged puns.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
You're years behind the times as that army is already virtually gone. They've long since been replaced by meters that can be read by simply driving down the street and interrogating them as they go by.
It's still working in Manassas, Virginia. If you want full duplex 32 kbps for $24.95/month that is.
The contractor, Comtec, that ran the program has pulled out and it is now managed directly through the city's utilities department.
Broadband means sending multiple signals over different frequencies on one line, as opposed to baseband which is one signal on one frequency. It actually has no technical meaning that involves necessarily high bandwidth.
I think Verizon is showing that isn't the case anymore.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
The real problem with broadband over powerline is you need alot of bandwidth, at the low frequencys that are called the AM band, and the shortwave band; which would not be so bad, if the cables they used for this were like the one the cable tv company used, but the powerlines are not shielded cables, anything that goes over them leaks energy all over the place, basicly overloading all the cheap electronics with rf recievers in them, yet unlike the cable tv companies, the power companies don't think you want to steal their signals... although I've read of many stealing power when the lines go right over their house or barns, which have huge transformers hidden in em
it's bugs us ham radio people the most, cause, the way to test if it was causing crazy ass static to overwhlem all the nice signals we used to get from foriegn countries, (which is how we make our free long distance phone calls, be it analog, or digital, wheather talking, typing, or sending pictures) was not to listen to the radio, no, instead it was the signal level at the closest powerlines and the fcc's version of how quick the signal is supposed to drop off.... hence this ugly argument, and the desire to hide the facts as to how it was decided.
It's about time this whole lamebrain flawed "technology" finally was put in the grave. There was a lot more than just Amateur Radio at stake. Military, Shipboard, and Aircraft use the 3-30 MHz band as well an I think they wouldn't have been as nice as the ARRL.
If you let the Power Line company lobbyists influence the FCC through gifts, meals, and post-FCC jobs, you're going to have problems: http://projects.publicintegrity.org/telecom/report.aspx?aid=62.
Sounds like my old 14.4 modem was broadband.
In contrast to BPL, powerline ethernet is doing quite well and has some nice products (I'd suggest it to anyone over wireless in a home any day - much faster and better range).
One big problem with BPL vs powerline ethernet has been distance as well, and this is something that everyone trying to sell BPL doesn't have a reasonable solution for.
I'm not into the HF part of amateur radio, but into the vh/uhf, digital aspects, but a lot of the guys I yack with on the radio that do use HF were scared to death that these idiots at the FCC were going to let this go through. Someone tried to say that in an emergency, the ham radio community would still work, because the power would be down in the area where BPL was used, so interference wouldn't be an issue. I had to explain to the moron that, well, that's fine, but what about the person on the other end they were wanting to get emergency communications out to had BPL? He wouldn't be able to hear them. Sometimes, people are just clueless... 73's KB0GNK
"Most of the BPL vendors the FCC was presumably working for have since moved on to promote smart electrical grid functionality."
So much for an improved grid.
Steve
Yay. After seeing the reports on what it would do to the radio spectrum, I was worried some guy in his office somewhere would just stamp the 'OK' on it. Thank you ARRL and all involved. Maybe I should renew my membership now... meh.
Yes that's ultimately where the term originates for data communications. "Narrowband" referred to the 0-to-8000 hertz bandwidth of a telephone line, whereas "broadband" referred to a DSL line that has no upper limit (except the increasing noise as you go higher in frequency).
Now broadband is little more than a marketing term which means "fast". It's gradually lost any technical definition. BPL aka Broadband over Phone Lines could just as easily be called "Fast Internet over phone lines". That's really all it means.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Not quite. simply utilizing different frequencies within a single base (i.e. sending 00110011 vs 01010101 and so on) is not the same as utilizing several frequency bands.
Imagine if you could tune to every AM radio station available at once, but instead of music, they were sending information. That is similar to downstream broadband. While your modem is limited in that it can only listen to 1 station and get the audible range of frequencies from 20-15000hz (not sure what the filtering cut off is exactly), but only from one channel at a time. 56k is closer to broadband, but not really, because it could tap both the up and down for speed in either direction.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
Now, all we need is BoWL, Broadband over Water Lines!
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
They're all corrupted !!! Kind Regards, DaForum http://www.da-forum.com/
Jerry, with such an obvious "spin" statement, I have to wonder which one of the FCC's pet BPL investors you represent or work for?
From day one of this fiasco, BPL was touted as the great "last mile" technology for rural America. It was to make easy, fast and reliable Internet connectivity available to Ma and Pa Kettle. Now, that the FCC has been proven to be complicit in foisting this ineffective and flawed technology (that has been similarly abandoned by almost every other country that's tried it) on a gullible America, you have the gall to suggest "They didn't really mean that"???
Fess up - who's signing your checks? Or are you just blind to the facts due to sight-line obstruction?
The one good thing? Rule of Law still prevails in the US - even if it takes smashing it over the heads of those that are tasked to enforce it.
Senior NCO in the fight against entropy. I've seen things, man. Things no one should have to see.....
I actually don't expect much resistance to the puns, but I'd think that sort of thing should be confined to your own ohm.
I am officially gone from
Where do you live, Tomorrowland? I can hardly imagine that the ancient meter on the back of my house will respond to any such interrogation.
Power over waterlines would be a neater trick though.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Fear not, citizen. We will break those rebel meters and continue to protect you!
http://www.google.com/tisp/
Actually, the way they do this is using an address layer like most any other protocol. A bunch of different topologies exist, but generally speaking, each monitored node will be uniquely addressable with a value embedded in the data frames rather than just by frequency. Multiple frequencies are used to dynamically adjust to the presence of various types of noise.
You must have been a graduate of the University of Coulombia!
(Re-volting, isn't it?)
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
My meter is read digitally, has been for 4 years. No one comes to my house. I'm not using BoPL.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Real competition down every street ? Americans might get a taste for it and look for more in other sectors.
The NSA has grown up with generations of US telcos. Everybody is happy. Nothing slips, leaks, is found or talked about.
What happens if a warning goes up in Berlin, Beijing, Johannesburg or London that a pipe is blocked?. "Our network is been messed with again" and they find something by chance? Local cops wait for a hacker sting after a call from head office.
Open a van packed with narus units and find ip's that are off the chart?
Best just to kill it in committee. Everybody wins. No new evil companies to hurt established players.
No stray RF to make grandparents generation of toy users or the star scientists lobby hard, no new tech for the NSA to stress about.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Watch that 'ancient meter' very closely. One day, the power company will swap it out with another. It'll still look 'ancient', with a spinning disk and dial readouts. But inside, there's a small plastic box and a pulse counter (watching the disk). That will respond to the aforementioned interrogation.
My utility company (possibly one of the most backward outfits in the nation) refitted all of our electric and gas meters years ago. They can read them by driving down the road in rural areas, or with a wireless mesh network consisting of repeaters attached to street lights every few blocks (a box about the size of a CATV amp with an antenna sticking out). At larger intervals, they lease a data line from the telco* connecting the system back to HQ.
*I think that line leasing is purely political, to keep the likes of Qwest and Verizon's heads down. In the more rural areas, where the telcos aren't paying attention to the broadband market, the power company just ran their own fiber. And now they're getting into the real retail broadband market.
Have gnu, will travel.
The alleged housing bubble collapsed because they took simple mortgages, then sliced them up and sold slices that contained bits and pieces of them on hedged bets, mixed in with such things as insurance bets, student loans, all sorts of oddball stuff, with more borrowed alleged money, then they did it again and again, up to *twenty times*. They took a mortgage and made believe if was worth ten times what it was and then proceeded to bet against each other. When a lot of these bets came due, they didn't have the scratch and then extorted the people by threatening to "crash the economy" if they didn't get bailed out to cover their derivatives bets. It's been a congame, an economic coup. They went so far into insanity with it that a lot of homeowners now are skating, they are demanding to see the paperwork to see who actually owns their house and mortgage, and it can't be proven who does! Judges are then ruling "sucks to be you" to these mortgage payment demanders because they can't even come up with who owns what anymore. They should have let them crash and burn, we don't need to have some huge quadrillion dollar casino as the primary driving force of the economy. Here, check out this latest.
The original homeowners with ARMs are REAL small potatoes in this fiasco, they just want you to fixate on that so you don't see the real problem. Don't look behind that curtain! The big kahuna is all the derivative exposure by a handful of huge investment banks-they shouldn't even be called banks really- and some insurance companies, most of it completely unregulated and off the books for public scrutiny. They are taking the tax payers money and still getting stinking rich with it by buying up other banks and so on. It's just a huge push to consolidate all the wealth and power into fewer hands. It's not an accident, it is a crime! These leet mofos who float around between wallstreet/the Fed and official government positions need to face serious jail time over it, it has been the mother of all extortion and bribery and influence peddling rackets.
Some area are even farther ahead than your drive-by method, and use a phone service to simply dials into the meter and gets readings. No humans needed.
I remember when I was a kid I thought that people who "played with" their meters were magicians. Of course after years of study I know all you need is a well-placed magnet to slow the old spinning disk style down to any rate you choose. However no one should do this because it is clearly illegal.
I wonder if people today are more likely or less likely to know how to "fool" an old style spinning disk electric meter. Of course a "smart" meter would be much less susceptible to tampering--one would think. They should be able to put in enough sensors to detect external EM sources.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Long since? My meter just got upgraded to have this capability two months ago! South St Louis City got upgraded sometime last year, and last I checked they were one of the 20 biggest cities in the country..
Telsa gain!
I was wondering if say MAC or IP address topologies could be applicable to BPL. BTW aren't certain ISP's already doing this? I could swear I've seen something that looks like an average AC plug with an ethernet port where the normal "tail" would originate. What other purpose would such a "plug" have, if not to transfer data via "power conduits"?
-Oz
They only lean toward MAC/IP topologies in BPL. In lower-bandwidth scenarios (metering) they go a variety of ways, largely because extended distances mean signals from a given node won't be visible across the entire network, which forces a repeater mechanism of some kind. It gets complex fairly quickly, especially in commercial systems, where huge banks of fluorescent lights create some unpredictable behavior.
Making things worse are the customers who have heard about BPL and say, "Why can't you just replace all these devices with something that does broadband and greater throughput?"
Try http://www.arrl.org/ for original stories. If we had another 4 years of Bush we would be in a world of hurt. Do nothing, tell nothing. The court made an 180 degree turnaround after reading the FCC's non-redacted script, just as anyone will. A small group of geeks can make a difference.
"There are good ships, and there are wood ships, the ships that sail the sea. But the best ships are friendships, and ma
I am glad we have put BPL to rest, at least for now. I have seen the video demonstrations from hams (I am an amateur operator my self) driving around the BPL test sites showing the kind of interference caused with these systems. I also work for a water utility. There is no need for power companies to spend truck loads of money just to read meters. They can setup, easily, radio read meters where a very few number of people can drive around and read OR a wireless mesh network in which NO ONE has to leave the office unless a transmitter is not working properly. With that said, the power companies were not the biggest pushers, the FCC was and Michael Powell (at the time) and his chronies were trying to appease the idea to bring broadband to EVERYONE but with little forethought. The U.S. should have been and already have, by now, a national wireless internet service. BPL is gone, thank you to the ARRL, let's move on.
No, Broadband means information (signal or data) modulated on a carrier to improve transmissibility. It does not mean multiple signals or multiple carriers, although it doesn't prohibit either of those things. It has no connotation of multiplexing, although fat pipes often attract that usage.