“Call it a dark horse in the race to bring Internet connections to America’s homes. The electric utility industry wants to bring us Internet connections as well,” Dean Takahashi reports for The Mercury News. “Consumers already have cable TV and phone companies vying to sign them up for high-speed Internet service. The power companies would be new contenders in this race.”
“It may sound crazy that the people who have brought us outages and brownouts are promising round-the-clock high-speed Internet access. But after years of incubation, industry observers say it’s ready to happen. Trials have begun, and big rollouts are expected in 2006,” Takahashi reports. “The service, called BPL for broadband over power lines, could be cheaper and faster than DSL service over phone lines or cable-TV that now supply Internet connections to most U.S. households.”
Full article here.
I was paying $105/mo for cable ISP, one “persistent” IP for my server, and 4Mbps/400kbps(never topped 350), then they recently increased the “claim” to 5Mbps/768kbps. Problem is that it varies from zilch to near-maximum, but is never consistent… sometimes lots of latency, sometimes quick. At least it’s been more reliable (lately) than the power grid! Thank God for my big ol’ UPS units. Oh, and I tried their free hosting, fine for 3 months then they crashed and lost my site. :~{
Last year I’d been sucked into a local “wireless ISP” on 2.4 GHz band. Fucking thing never worked, didn’t even have dialup speed sometimes. Supposed to hit 3.5Mbps, only saw 1.8 for about 2 days once, if it ever worked it was inconsistent, kinda like ISDN…. felt like a LocalTalk net compared to gigabit.
Anyway, today my new DSL modem arrived. Only $23/mo added to my phone bill… and now I have 7Mbps/896kbps. Not too shabby? 8->
Think about it. Every single device that gets plugged in could now be designed to connect to your network or gather real time info…toaster, fridge, electric shaver… whatever. Not sure what it is yet…but maybe there is a good reason why my refrigerator should be surf’n the web.
>In very small rural towns and secluded homes (farms),BPL may be the only way to get high speed being that they have no cable or DSL.>
What’s wrong with a satellite dish?
Satellite dish = same speeds as DSL, but 2x the cost
14 September 2005
DS2’s Radio Friendly BPL Technology puts Competition on the Defensive
Speaking at 2005 UPLC Annual Conference, Victor Dominguez, DS2’s Director of Strategy and Standardization, outlined the reasons why DS2’s 200Mbps powerline solution is the only regulatory compliant technology available for BPL commercial deployments.
Dominguez was dismissive about claimed alternatives to DS2.
Mr Dominguez was adamant about competitors claims “I think that we have put the competition on the defensive. Our competitors would love to have the flexible notching capabilities that we have for BPL and In-Home PLCs, but the truth is that they don’t. DS2 has had dynamic notching since its first chip set and can mitigate radio interference in a programmable way and other PLC chipsets do not. We would like to thank our competition for the rumours propagated at several press interviews, they have been attracting attention towards one of the main competitive advantages of our technology, we mastered programmable notches in a 200 Mbps chipset more than 2 years ago, since then we have been shipping in volume for BPL and In-Home applications, and still remains to be proven that competition can follow us.”
DS2’s technology is well known in the BPL industry for being one of the first proponents of programmable notching in powerline communications, as the best method for addressing potential interference to radio services. DS2’s 200 Mbps BPL technology, available in silicon since 2003, already implements this dynamic notching functionality, which has been tested in the field, in several commercial BPL deployments, and demonstrated in several BPL industry trade shows.
“Other competing technologies have some notches, but they are fixed, including the most advanced designs from followers (on top of that they exhibit performance below 40% our speed). This means that they fall short for the demands of regulators and consumers everywhere from the FCC to the European Commission who require that frequency bands can be selectively notched out, even after the equipment has been deployed. Operators deploying non-DS2 based solutions risk having their equipment withdrawn from the field because once it is out there, there is nothing that can be done to prevent interfence with radio signals. With DS2, however, any issues can be resolved even when the equipment is in the field by remotely disabling problematic frequencies thus complying with today’s or future regulatory requirements and automatically avoiding any radio signals in any part of the world”. Mr Dominguez placed special emphasis on the radio friendliness of the system.
In February this year, DS2’s 200 Mbps powerline technology has been chosen as the baseline technology for the European utilities developing PLC standards to accelerate the adoption of low cost, high performance broadband access PLC. As part of the selection process, an extensive set of tests were performed, including notching functionality benchmarks for avoidance of potential interferences to radio services. In addition, report from Ofcom, the British telecom regulator recognised the significant advance represented “The flexibility of the DS2 product, with its programmable spectrum mask and downstream notching capability, represents a significant step towards a more EMC friendly PLT solution.”
Specifically, DS2 BPL system can implement notches in any frequency band, not only in radio amateur bands. This means that the system can be adapted to changing regulations in several countries. For example, FCC recently prohibited BPL Operators to use frequencies within defined “excluded bands”. Only products based on DS2 technology can be adapted to this new regulation remotely from the Operator’s Network Operation Centre, while products based on competing chips would need to replace the hardware in the field.
DS2 200 Mbps the technology which underlies the majority of commercial access PLC and IPTV/ADSL deployments worldwide and has been built into equipment manufactured by the leading US, European and Asian BPL manufacturers. It is used by XDSL/IPTV operators like Telefonica and electricity giants such as Consolidated Edison, Duke Energy, EdF, EdP, Iberdrola and Endesa, to drive their broadband over powerline offerings. As of September 2005, the estimated number of consumers and businesses that enjoy access to IPTV, internet and voice-over IP services is estimated at 500,000, with more than two million homes passed in deployments with more than 30 power utilities world-wide.
DS2’s Radio Friendly BPL Technology puts Competition on the Defensive
http://www.ds2.es/press/record.aspx?id=29
http://www.ds2.es/home.aspx
“the people who have brought us outages and brownouts”
For the last 51 years every time I get up the damn lights have turned on, save twice. Is this guy reporting from Baghdad?
MIcrosoft is developing its own technology to deliver data across gas or water plumbing networks. The catch is you must keep a continuous (but small) stream of water or gas running. Bounce back interference waves carry uploads of up to 128kbps … pathetic … but cheap enough to be bundled into longVista at no extra charge. Test runs have confirmed the technology is valid save for some minor problems: the water becomes contaminated and jaundiced, and the gas emits a brown soot smelling of Ballmergas.
Satellite dish = same speeds as DSL, but 2x the cost
thats crap i live in the middle of nowhere and i have a dish
it is the biggest ripoff on the planet
it takes almost 3 minutes to upload a 150kb file
and i have to unplug it at least once a day to reboot it
so that it works at all
i hate it
i just wish i had cable
thats how bad it is
i have been hoping for BPL for years
PR, thanks for the info.
The more high-speed providers the better. Competition is great. It would result in lower prices for the service.
Let the competition begin!
This is GREAT NEWS. I heard about the power line internet test in Kansas City, or wherever, a few years ago and wondered what happened. This is a fantastic alternative to expensive cable, satellite, and DSL. Anyting to bring prices down is a good thing. I’m going broke on cable.
Several things about this.
First, the argument that “it’s the only way to get broadband to rural areas” is false. BPL requires the same kind of repeaters and other equipment needed to extend DSL – and even more of them due to the problems inherent in unshielded, untwisted pairs.
Notching technology does not completely eliminate interference – it just takes it down a certain (fairly large) percentage in the notched area, but leaves the interference everywhere else. This essentially puts a stop to any future development of RF spectrum in a BPL area, because of the cost issues involved in putting yet more notching into every BPL system.
What BPL essentially does is to use up a scarce resource – the RF spectrum – to create what it already a non-scarce resrouce – broadband data channels. Yes, rural areas need better access, and this can be accomplished much better either with DSL repeaters, WiMax, or (gasp) actually pulling fiber out to where people live. Fiber is just as easy to pull as copper, and is a lot cheaper – they might as well bite the bullet now and do it. Heck, I’d think that they would already have thought of putting a small additional tax on existing broadband to pay to build the infrastructure to rural areas. Would anyone else mind paying a dime a month to get this done? I wouldn’t.