AT&T Begins Testing High-Speed Internet Over Power Lines (reuters.com)

AT&T has started trials to deliver high-speed internet over power lines. The company announced the news on Wednesday and said that trials have started in Georgia state and a non-U.S. location. Reuters reports: AT&T aims to eventually deliver speeds faster than the 1 gigabit per second consumers can currently get through fiber internet service using high-frequency airwaves that travel along power lines. While the Georgia trial is in a rural area, the service could potentially be deployed in suburbs and cities, the company said in a statement. AT&T said it had no timeline for commercial deployment and that it would look to expand trials as it develops the technology.

"We think this product is eventually one that could actually serve anywhere near a power line," said Marachel Knight, AT&T's senior vice president of wireless network architecture and design, in an interview. She added that AT&T chose an international trial location in part because the market opportunity extends beyond the United States.

Comments

Ham radio.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ham radio interference problem solved?

Or do we have to pay to fund for emergency communications now/screw Ham?

Re:Ham radio.

[zlives]

it could be that they are using wet string between cables as well.

Re:Ham radio.

[k6mfw]

sounds like the broadband over powerlines proposal some years ago that died. This may do the same like Ricochet, Metro (I think) and a few others that was going to be the "cat's meow" for all internet but ended up biting the dust. Yeah, higher speed internet to more customers... call me cynical but sounds much like waiting for the flying car, controlled fusion power plants, men on Mars, etc.

Regarding emergency communications, first order of business is emergency managers (and fire chiefs, IC, others) want to first be able to talk across their town, not to another county, state. Local comms can be VHF, UHF. Of course when everything goes down, there's no power in the power lines so no interference then can do HF.

Re: Ham radio.

[bws111]

Radio is an obsolete technology? And this may surprise you, but the two ends of a ham conversation may be in different places, hundreds or thousands of miles apart as they were during the recent tragedy in Puerto Rico. The electric may not be out in both locations.

Re: Ham radio.

[rally2xs]

>The emergency communication issue is irrelevant because of mobile cell towers.

Remember Puerto Rico? No power whatever - well, almost - everything was out except for extremely limited areas with emergency generators. The American Red Cross asked the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) for help. The ARRL is ham radio. The ARRL was able to send 22 operators that went down to Puerto Rico and relayed health and welfare messages back to the USA.

Those messages came in chiefly on 7.000 - 7.300 megahertz bad, known as 40 meters. Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) of about 10 years ago would clobber the hell out of bands in this area of the spectrum. While there was no BPL or anything else in Puerto Rico to interfere, the USA hams on the other end would not be receiving these 40 meter signals with a power line going "Braaaaaappppp" in the backyard for the purpose of delivering internet signals over a power line.

This is an idea that deserved to die before it was formed. Hopefully this will be shot dead with a bazooka before anyone can deploy it.

Re:Ham radio.

[Ol Olsoc]

I didn't know that 'airwaves' could travel over powerlines. Maybe just the high frequency ones described in the summary? That's a hell of a breakthrough.

They have done a minimal version of this for years.

The problem is that this is another one of those ideas where people believe they can trump the laws of physics.

The last time this was attempted, It failed pretty miserably. There are some serious problems. A power line is an antenna of sorts. You put signals on it, and they are going to radiate outwards from it. And the different frequencies of all the digital data will create a rather broadband hash. It interferes with licensed services. Attempts were made to notch out the frequencies that it used to not have the interference, but intermodulation, the mixing of different frequencies kind of made the notches not do much. The square-like waves of digital signals just make a splattery mess.

Then there is getting it into the house. The concept uses the signals coming in on the house wiring But the signals don't survive goingthrough the transformer that feeds poer to your house. the cure such as it is, is some bypass circuitry that has the signal travelling down high tnesion lines. like a couple KiloVolt, then bypassing the transformer. to your house line. Hopefully the failure mode is always open.

And the real kicker is that just about any radio transmission can knock them out. Kids with hand-talkies, People with CB radios, amateur radio operators, airplaines passing overhead.

Coupled with the fact that it's a "Last Mile" solution, it needs an actual fiber or cable line to get the signal to the BPL lines, the main purpose of BPL is to extract investment money from people who do not understand RF.

It's always sold as a way to get Internet access to people who aren't in a populated area. That part is 100 percent bogus. What would be the point of a last mile solution? They have to run the real line alomst to the house way out in the country.

What frequency? WIll ATT be tertiary use of freqs?

[Da w00t]

In the US, there's a swath of radio band that is reserved. First for the US government (e.g. military), then for licensed amateur radio operators. I think there's a tertiary option where if $user only uses less than some-small-number-of-miliwatts. But the higher precedence one trumps the lower ones.

If this is going to be on ham radio frequencies, hams are going to essentially be able to cite FCC regs and say "shut that shit off" due to interference. Hams are GOOD at triangulating interferance, and if they discover it's coming from *all around them* they're going to speak up *quick*.

Remember, Hams are folks who have spent their own money to get radio gear, and then use that radio gear to provide emergency communications in the event of a disaster. On 9/11 I took my handset to the local hospital in case land line phones and cell phones went down. Fortunately I wasn't needed, but ... you do not want to fuck with free emergency communications.

Re:What frequency? WIll ATT be tertiary use of fre

[Areyoukiddingme]

If this is going to be on ham radio frequencies, hams are going to essentially be able to cite FCC regs and say "shut that shit off" due to interference. Hams are GOOD at triangulating interferance, and if they discover it's coming from *all around them* they're going to speak up *quick*.

I'd bet a pizza that AT&T has received assurances from Ajit Pai that the protests of hams will be ignored this time. Power line data has been tried before. It always makes a mess of the radio spectrum. Hams file the paperwork, and it goes away. Until the next time. This is the next time, but it might be a little different from the other times, since we have a blatantly corrupt chairman of the FCC doing what we all thought Tom Wheeler would do but didn't. I'm sure Mr. Wheeler was a great disappointment to his former employers.

Idiotic idea

[ChrisMaple]

This would be a hideous EMI generator. It would be insecure by design.

Power lines are not designed to be constant impedance, and not designed to propagate high frequencies.

Ever hear a high voltage power line insulator sizzle when it's raining? That sort of noise will wipe out any information being transmitted down the line.

Re:What frequency? WIll ATT be tertiary use of fre

[R3d M3rcury]

Remember, Hams are folks who have spent their own money to get radio gear, and then use that radio gear to provide emergency communications in the event of a disaster.

And they are wonderful people for doing this. But, keep in mind that the other 99.9% when there is no emergency going on, they are using it to chat with people on the other side of the globe.

So I--and all my neighbors--have to give up on 1Gb/sec Internet so that you can chat with Ivan in Ukraine?

Re:What frequency? WIll ATT be tertiary use of fre

[Obfuscant]

they are using it to chat with people on the other side of the globe.

They are also using it to train and practice for the times when lives depend on it.

So I--and all my neighbors--have to give up on 1Gb/sec Internet so that you can chat with Ivan in Ukraine?

No, you just have to use a system that doesn't obliterate existing uses of the radio spectrum, that is already recognized as a backup communications system when disaster strikes.

Re:Be thankful

[PopeRatzo]

Now as to the real topic. AT&T is like the Comcast of the telephone industry.

So, what you're saying is that AT&T is the Roy Moore of telecoms?

This reminds me, I have a Roy Moore joke:

"Say, Cletus, it sure is cold here in Alabama. It only got to be 35 today!"
"Yes sir, Judge Moore. I hear tonight we'll be dipping into the teens."

[Don't pretend you didn't laugh]