Technical Editor Margery Conner's PowerSource streams the latest developments in electronic power design and related technologies. Follow Margery on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/margeryc.
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Blog
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
I for one welcome our new broadband-over-powerline overlords
Nov 12 2008 12:25PM | Permalink |Comments (8) |
IBM and International Broadband Electric Communications (IBEC) will team to install Broadband over Power Line (BPL) networks at electric cooperatives throughout the eastern US. From the press release, “IBEC will focus on providing broadband services to underserved residents in rural America.”
From the Wall Street Journal article, “Rural cooperatives, responding to their member-owners, have tried to find ways to get broadband installed. International Broadband developed repeaters that can easily be attached to power lines every quarter of a mile to maintain the signal. And the U.S. Department of Agriculture has made loans available to jump-start some broadband deployment. President-elect Barack Obama made a commitment to broadband deployment in rural areas part of his stump speech during the election campaign.” Pricing starts at $30/month.
Why the push to bring BPL to rural areas when satellite ISPs are already in place? My ISP currently is a WildBlue satellite connection. I’m quite happy with the uptime of Wildblue, and basically it provides the service it charges me for, but Satellite has some inherent drawbacks. Because of the latency, I can’t tap into my employer’s intranet, nor can I use a VOIP service like skype. Also, my downloads are limited, and that throttles down my use of the system for media downloads. Wildblue charges $50/month and up.
Note: For a great hands-on look at lutting BPL in the home, read Brian Dipert’s recent blog posts, My Powerline Network: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back?
Related entries in: Power Sources/Controllers |
Reader Comments
at 11/12/2008 2:09:09 PM, Satcom.Bill@Gmail.com said:
Well there goes the amateur radio community ability to communicate all over the world with the increased noise level from the broad band signals.
This has already been proven to be more than a nuisance in Virginia.
at 11/12/2008 2:38:32 PM, DaveW said:
Somewhat dumb question: Why not have WiMax repeaters on the power poles? Use the pole/tower to hold the repeater and antennas plus a power tap to the line? This avoids creating yet another flavor of bandwidth pipe with its different hardware and development cost.
at 11/12/2008 3:00:55 PM, IndustryPlayer said:
Unfortunately IBM has not paid attention to well known BPL issues and litigation based on the FCC''s failure to properly administer and enforce FCC Part 15 of their regulations pertaining to preventing radiated interference to existing FCC licensed RF services. This will inevitably lead to costly litigation for the BPL Licensees as well as the FCC. Of course you and I will be paying the FCC''s litigation bill through our taxes that are collected by the IRS. Performance of previously installed systems has been proven in general terms to yield marginal to poor performance at best. Other FCC regulation compliant last mile or 10 mile wireless data interconnect / transport solutions are becoming available shortly that will make BPL obsolete before it would be fully deployed! IBM should do their homework before reopening old cans of worms. Those who choose to ignore history are doomed to repeat it! This is guaranteed to be a looser as soon as the contract is signed or as they say "DOS" or Dead-on-Signing!
at 11/12/2008 3:41:44 PM, IBMwatch said:
IBM is so busy building research institutes in China and India that it only has time to draw extra profit from rural U.S. farmers- nothing more from its' historical American profit base. This idiotic alternate to modern high-speed data link technologies is only suitable as a precursor to dominance in control of energy distribution and management technology. Like the proprietary-buss PC, IBM will cause disruption in the smooth evolution of social technologies and then move on to other areas of modern life to squeeze more profits. What is Mr. Palmisano thinking?!!!
at 11/13/2008 1:27:50 AM, ubetcha said:
From the ARRL release today:
"IBEC's equipment doesn't use the ham bands," said BPL expert and ARRL Laboratory Manager Ed Hare, W1RFI, "making it less likely that they will have any interference complaints from amateurs. Their equipment, however, does interfere with shortwave broadcast and other spectrum, but in the US, not many users have complained. IBM has been in the BPL business for a few years now, so this venture is nothing new for them." IBEC staff member Brent Zitting, KB4SL, serves as a member of ARRL's EMC Committee.
at 11/13/2008 2:21:31 PM, JustAThought said:
Obama is a lawyer, not an electrical engineer. He doesn't understand the ramifications of this technology he's buying into. There has been a lot of money invested in this dead-end technology. I imagine 'Unintentional Radiator' is probably a term found in law books though.
at 11/13/2008 10:34:56 PM, to late to the party said:
They had these gadgets to run stuff over power lines in the late eighties, back then if they had went ahead and perfected the tech it mite have been something, but now its just too late to the party, wi-fi, direct satalite and newer dsl tech are all way faster.
Oh even though its not mentioned in this artical, I''m sure Obama''s coments were not directly aimed at a perticular technology
at 11/17/2008 5:33:41 AM, arclight said:
Since the FCC has now released the TV white space for use, efforts should be focused there. I have yet to see a thorough IM analysis done on the current power network that shows what happens when the BPL signals mix with the 60 Hz energy (very large "carrier", that). My analysis tells me that three-tone 3rd-order IM, with 60 Hz being one of the tones, will just about double whatever spectrum has been set aside for this purpose (e.g. 2-80 MHz puts 3-tone 3rd-order IM energy at up to 158 MHz, at significant levels).
The Departments of Defense, Energy, and Homeland Security still use HF radio as part of their operational networks. What's this deployment going to do to that? Or have we so forgotten how to do objective science that it doesn't matter any longer?
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