Power companies enter broadband market (very interesting)

Cnet.com via The New York times on the Web ^ | October 16, 2005 | Ken Belson

[rawhide]

CINCINNATI--The idea has been around for years. In Spain and elsewhere in Europe, utility companies have long offered high-speed Internet service to consumers over their power lines.

But American utilities are only now beginning to roll out broadband connections on their grid.

For Jim Hofstetter, a salesman for Cadbury Schweppes, the food and beverage company, this new option was far better than the high-speed connection he used for years from his local cable provider.

"I would never go back now that I have this," said Hofstetter, who often works from his home office in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Cincinnati. He pays $30 a month for the service from Current Communications, an Internet service provider, which uses the power lines run by Cinergy, the local utility in Cincinnati. That cost is about $15 cheaper than comparable Internet access from either Cincinnati Bell or Time Warner Cable. The Current service can be piped into any electrical outlet in Hofstetter's home, with no reduction in speed even when he, his wife and their three daughters are online at the same time. All that is needed is a baseball-size jack that plugs into the wall and is connected to a computer with an Ethernet cable.

Known as broadband over power line, or BPL, the service is poised to challenge the cable and phone companies that dominate the high-speed Internet market. Instead of burying cables and rewiring homes, BPL providers use the local power grid, which means that any home with electricity could get the service.

[Kevin OMalley]

bump for later reading

[thecabal]

I don't believe that was the point, which seemed to be that the allocation of the bandwidth to ham radio is inefficient, meaning there are better uses for the bandwidth. That's what I took anyway. BTW, what does CW stand for?

Perhaps if you look at it strictly on the theory of "how can it benefit me now". However, there have been many EEs that probably got into their career because of ham radio. If we killed ham radio, I think we would have less people getting into EE and RF engineering. Of course, that's just a theory of mine and may be worth nothing. Of course, I have a vested interest in seeing hams keep their allocations. :)

CW stands for Continuous Wave. It's another name for Morse Code. It is one of the most efficent uses of RF bandwidth you can find.

[Nowhere Man]

It can also severely hamper shortwave, including Ham, radio communications.

I know, especially in the shortwave and lower VHF bands, it is said the frequency range most affected is the 2000 kc to 80 Mc (Lower VHF-TV channels) range, some cases up to even 100 Mc (middle FM band). I've heard stories where they tried it in Japan but it is now banned there because of it.

[Nowhere Man]

A few years ago I was listening to german radio and they mentioned that during the 1920's they could broadcast world wide with only 500 watts.

I think KDKA put out 100 watts in 1920 and I think they were around 909 kc on the AM dial and on that first broadcast, they even gotten QSL's as far away as New Zealand. I'm a ham radio operator myself.

[thecabal]

Just cellular transmission. The tiny slice of bandwidth that our federal government "gave" the cellular providers must be reused--thus the need for cells. This means that RF engineers, (can you hear me now?) must design systems to deal with extreme interference issues. Even using digital CDMA technology, there is a limited number of calls that can be carried on the tiny slices of bandwith that Clinton's administration busted up the 1900 MHz range into but that is an argument for another day.

I will freely admit that I don't know a lot about the effects of BPL on the bands above VHF. From what I know, the harmful interference is most pronounced at HF and drops off at higher frequencies. Cell phone companies don't want anything to do with HF, they want the higher frequencies. I'm not quite sure what cellular spectrum has to do with BPL, unless you are just saying to take it all away from the hams.

The thing that fries me about BPL is that it is licensed under Part 15 rules, which basically states that it must not cause harmful interference with any other licensed service and that it must accept any interference from other licensed services. Because the BPL industry had some buddies in the FCC like Michael Powell, it appeared that the FCC looked the other way when it came to harmful interference to other services. BTW, hams aren't the only ones affected by BPL interference, the miliary still uses a lot of HF communication as well.

If the BPL industry could prove that they had a system which caused no harmful interference to licensed services, then I would have no problem with it. However, I am doubtful about that. When you send RF through unshieled cable strung up high in the air, it's going to act like an antenna and radiate.

One other point for all of those so gung-ho for BPL. Theoretically, someone could setup a receiver to demodulate the BPL signals leaked by powerlines and read the Internet traffic. Would you want someone to have open access (with no practical way to stop them) to anything you send and receive over the Internet, such as personal and financial information?

[thecabal]

Check out this page for some videos that have the sounds of BPL. Maybe you can find a match here.

http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/aud-vid.html

[Nowhere Man]

What good is any of this if a disaster knocks out cell towers? How good was cell service in the path of Katrina? huh? I would say it was ZERO!

Or what if some terrorists hack into the super-duper computer controleld networks and satellites, amateur radio will be the only way to go. What if we get into an atomic war or if someone lights a nuke up somehwre in the U.S., all that high-tech stuff will be useless as a screen door on a submarine.

[Nowhere Man]

The thing that fries me about BPL is that it is licensed under Part 15 rules, which basically states that it must not cause harmful interference with any other licensed service and that it must accept any interference from other licensed services. Because the BPL industry had some buddies in the FCC like Michael Powell, it appeared that the FCC looked the other way when it came to harmful interference to other services. BTW, hams aren't the only ones affected by BPL interference, the miliary still uses a lot of HF communication as well.

Call me cynical, but as Chuck Harder on his "For The People" radio show used to say, "follow the money trail" and that will explain it all.

[thecabal]

Call me cynical, but as Chuck Harder on his "For The People" radio show used to say, "follow the money trail" and that will explain it all.

You read my mind. I was thinking that I should have mentioned something like that after I made the post.

[montag813]

Anything to hurt Time Warner and Verizon. They have been spending millions to keep local governments from enabling Wi-Fi in public spaces. I hope they take a huge hit from this. Bastards.

[StevieB]

Time to sell your cable TV and internet-over-cable stocks...

Before you run out and buy BPL wholesale, make sure you are betting on the right horse. There was a big Eastern Pennsylvania utility that terminated their BPL experiment a couple of weeks ago. They indicated that the price they could sell the service and make it pay was too high to effectively market the service. The economics of the infrastructure that is required for BPL may be too much.

There is still a vaporware element to BPL projections, and until they get some more experience it will be hard to tell how far BPL can go.

[LibertyGirl77]

Does it sound almost like a digital morse code? I pick up something similar on my baby monitor and my VoIP phone. Also I get a repetitive static "blip" sometimes. And no, I don't need any tinfoil. I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation.

[itsahoot]

Now if they start offering tv signals over the power lines....

Already being done in Rural areas.

[itsahoot]

In what way? In what mode of operation, Morse code?

Why doesn't satellite communication replace this? Except for the annoying time delay, (see below for option) seems like an obvious choice.

Navigation-Related Services over Stratospheric Platforms Abstract. High Altitude Platforms (HAPs) have been given much attention recently as a promising approach for efficient provision of communication, surveillance and navigational services. When flying in the stratosphere at an altitude of 17 km or higher, they have certain advantages and fill the gap between terrestrial transmitters on one hand and satellite-based system on the other. In this paper we describe navigational and navigation-related services that could be provided by HAPs. This work has been done in the framework of the European project HeliNet, which was concerned with developing a network of unmanned, long endurance solar powered aircraft for providing the above services.

[Professional Engineer]

A few years ago I was listening to german radio and they mentioned that during the 1920's they could broadcast world wide with only 500 watts.

Depending upon where we are in the 11-year sunspot cycle, it can be done with milliwatts.

[Professional Engineer]

You prefer carrier pidgeons?

[festus]

Wonder how they get around isolation transformers?

I've found that if you jumper across the contacts with a live squirrel ......

[festus]

It can also severely hamper shortwave, including Ham, radio communications.

Which is ok because as long as power and the internet is functional ham radio isn't needed. But in a true disaster the power grid is down and the hams can save us all without interference.

[thecabal]

Which is ok because as long as power and the internet is functional ham radio isn't needed. But in a true disaster the power grid is down and the hams can save us all without interference.

Are you serious? If ham radio is dead 99.99% of the time, where do you think you are going to get any hams when you need them? Even if there were any throwbacks that saved their gear, they would have no practice in emergency communications. But perhaps you were being sarcastic.

[festus]

I think that life will go on without hams just fine.