I had a similar problem. I eventually solved it when a new subdivision went in about a half mile from our farm. Comcast wired the subdivision, but wanted many thousands of dollars to extend it on to our farm. So I rented a shelf in the garage of one of my new neighbors and got Comcast service to the shelf. Then using a couple Proxim Tsunami radios, I setup a wireless link from my neighbor's garage to one of my farm fields. Using Power Over Ethernet, I was able to string an ethernet cable out to the antenna and radio in the field through a couple of my greenhouses.
It could probably have been done cheaper, but since my business depends on reliable service that I didn't have to muck about with it very much, I went commercial. I blogged about it and posted some photos when I finished the project: "The New Internet Connection"
I asked the same question when I did my college internship at the Montana Power Company in 1979. According to the engineer that I queried, for transmission lines 50KV and greater, the cables would have to be in conduit filled with the same insulating oil that fills transformers. This would be extremely expensive to install and maintain. He said the potential environmental liability would prohibit any large scale deployment. At the time, the company was going through environmental problems involving PCB contaminated oils leaking from transformers all over the state.
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I had a similar problem. I eventually solved it when a new subdivision went in about a half mile from our farm. Comcast wired the subdivision, but wanted many thousands of dollars to extend it on to our farm. So I rented a shelf in the garage of one of my new neighbors and got Comcast service to the shelf. Then using a couple Proxim Tsunami radios, I setup a wireless link from my neighbor's garage to one of my farm fields. Using Power Over Ethernet, I was able to string an ethernet cable out to the antenna and radio in the field through a couple of my greenhouses. It could probably have been done cheaper, but since my business depends on reliable service that I didn't have to muck about with it very much, I went commercial. I blogged about it and posted some photos when I finished the project: "The New Internet Connection"
I asked the same question when I did my college internship at the Montana Power Company in 1979. According to the engineer that I queried, for transmission lines 50KV and greater, the cables would have to be in conduit filled with the same insulating oil that fills transformers. This would be extremely expensive to install and maintain. He said the potential environmental liability would prohibit any large scale deployment. At the time, the company was going through environmental problems involving PCB contaminated oils leaking from transformers all over the state.