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Google Invests in Power-Line Broadband

Posted by Zonk on Thu Jul 07, 2005 12:57 PM
from the branching-out dept.
Google The Internet Businesses Networking IT
fsterman writes "ZDNet reports that Current Communications Group has received investment money from Google, Hearst, and Goldman Sachs for their internet over broadband ventures. The Wall Street Journal reports that the three companies invested roughly $100 million in the start-up. Current Communications and Cinergy Broadband said they will create one joint venture to bundle broadband and voice services for Cinergy's 1.5 million customers. Current also has plans to use the new investment money to expand its broadband over power line deployments in the U.S. and overseas."
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  • Wow (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    That gets me electrified!

  • Whew! (Score:5, Funny)

    by lucabrasi999 (585141) on Thursday July 07 2005, @12:59PM (#13005669) Journal
    I was getting worried. It was already past noon local time and I hadn't seen a /. submission on Google.

    • Re:Whew! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Rei (128717) on Thursday July 07 2005, @01:04PM (#13005741) Homepage
      You had me worried. The article had been up for two minutes, and we hadn't yet had a slashdot-metapost.

    • Re:Whew! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by That's Unpossible! (722232) * on Thursday July 07 2005, @01:44PM (#13006216)
      I think the thing that is more annoying to me is that I can easily filter out Google stories if I didn't want to read them, yet I have no way of filtering out the inevitable "Too many Google stories" comments that flood Google stories.

      SHUT UP ALREADY AND FILTER OUT THE GOOGLE TOPIC IF YOU ARE SICK OF IT!

  • Why? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Rei (128717) on Thursday July 07 2005, @01:00PM (#13005677) Homepage
    I thought that internet-over-power lines was pretty much a dead concept - not simply due to the fact that you had to largely redo your power infrastructure anyways so that it doesn't filter out your data, but because by the very nature of modulating a signal on a high power wire, you're building the world's largest radio transmitter network, and flooding everything with radio interference.

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MightyMartian (840721) on Thursday July 07 2005, @01:08PM (#13005784) Journal
      I can't see it ever happening. It would knock out emergency bands, and pretty much fsck up commercial radio. It was an idea that should have been abandoned years ago.
        • Unfortunately, BPL has already proven to be a very obnoxious radiator of energy into in-use communication bands. The problem is that when you put energy into a wire, that wire is always also an antenna radiating that energy. Power lines make excellent transmitting antennas, and a single installation can take out many forms of communications for at least a mile arond the wire, and because of ionospheric "skip", the interference from a single installation can have a global impact.

          Sure, signals can get into the wire when a strong station is close by, but they always get out.

          Bruce

    • My first response to this article was a quote from P.T. Barnum:

      "There's a sucker born every minute!"

      Now there may be some breakthrough that I'm unaware of, but it strikes me that someone is probably selling a bridge to Google on this one. Goldman Sachs I can understand (speculation and all), but Google? My only guess is that they may be hedging their bets "just in case".

    • Re:Why? (Score:4, Funny)

      by LodCrappo (705968) on Thursday July 07 2005, @01:18PM (#13005900) Homepage
      When will people quit whining about RF interference from powerline broadband? Who cares. RF is a dead technology that noone born in this century still finds cool. Radio is dead dead dead. I say fsck any and all wavelengths unless they're using em to bring me faster internet. All you hams should get a computer and learn to use email instead of tieing up valuable spectrum with your silly talking. If you really want to you can still use morse code over IP. Screw the radio, screw broadcast TV, screw emergency services. They should all be using broadband.

      • Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)

        by Spectre (1685) on Thursday July 07 2005, @01:27PM (#13006009)
        RF is a dead technology that noone born in this century still finds cool.

        Since when are we going to let a bunch of 4-year-olds decide what is cool?

      • "noone born in this century still finds cool"

        So you're saying we should base our opinions on what 4 year olds like?

        In that case, I think we should use magic pinwheels to distrubute data like the teletubbies do, cause thats what most people born in this century like.

      • Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)

        by scoove (71173) on Thursday July 07 2005, @02:59PM (#13007096)
        All you hams should get a computer and learn to use email instead of tieing up valuable spectrum with your silly talking.

        Normally it isn't prudent to respond to humor masqueraded as flamebait, but I thought I'd add some perspective for those who might be curious about the reality of such criticisms. Here are a few thoughts:

        Many of the carrier network CCIEs I work with are "hams" - licensed amateur radio operators. I'm only a lowly CCIP in process (actually with a CISSP and CISA, with a management/finance background, worked with Linux since Linus had it on two floppies (ala "pre distribution"), build a mean kernel and program in Python). I'm a general license ham and work with microwave communications over MPLS networks daily.

        There is considerable innovation done in modulation schemes, such as PSK, which increasingly gets integrated in the commercial wireless broadband world. I've constructed IPv6 over mesh protocol networks in amateur frequencies, and the best thing about the extensive range of amateur bands is that there's certain to be one for your open source project. One of my projects that needs more attention is my Python software repeater that controls a Piexx.com Motorola VHF-L, VHF-H or UHF radio from Linux.

        Amateur radio is very much open source radio, where broadband over powerline is closed source. If you're interested in open source and radiofrequency, amateur radio is where you go to get the open tools to experiment. Care to understand what really is happening in your 802.11? The theory is all contained in amateur radio. You'd be shocked how much you learn when you compile in AX.25 into your kernel, build the tools, and construct a whopping 56 kbps network on UHF (or even better, 1200 on some old Kantronics TNCs). You can keep up with Ethereal on a saturated network at those speeds, and suddenly basic IP and lower layer fundamentals click. Some of the best wireless security people I've met are hams. Just as a real kernel hacker is a better OS security person, a knowledgable ham is going to beat a "user" of 802.11 any day (anyone who claims to be a wireless security expert that simply knows how to click on an icon in NetStumbler is a joke).

        The BPL initiatives are unfortunately highly destructive to a very wide band of RF - not just HF. Low VHF frequencies are seriously degraded as well. BPL is a property grab no different than abusive software patents. It is theft of a third of the public radiofrequency commons for no reason other than corporate profit.

        The best analogy I can give a non-radio person on BPL is to imagine if Microsoft Longhorn would cause a 60% to 70% consumption in IP networks by having uncontrolled, sustained blasts of ICMP, TCP and UDP traffic. Microsoft's explanation that this just "had to happen because there is a demand for Longhorn" wouldn't pass with the rest of us who know there are better solutions. Forcing it if it doesn't fix is never a good approach.

        BPL suffers problems due to RF theory, not implementation. Just as I had to work around 1-2 second latencies in international satellite voice network engineering (no "negative latency inducer" could bail me out), transmission and distribution power systems are designed to radiate energy based on the RF injected (hence the 60 Hz hum one often hears). They are big antennas, but fortunately most electronics has worked around the awareness that 60 Hz is noisy and blankets the environment. Now induce HF to VHF and you've destroyed RF (and we're not factoring for harmonics and other higher band interference which is certain to occur).

        Incidentally, regarding this amusing comment:

        If you really want to you can still use morse code over IP. . Screw the radio, screw broadcast TV, screw emergency services. They should all be using broadband.

        Someone needs to learn the OSI model. He might be surprised to learn that his IP is riding over VHF, HF, or another frequency blasted by BPL. Our weather network in western Iowa uses mobile IP (IPv4oAX25) on lower VHF frequencies to monitor storms for the National Weather Service. Given BPL interference, you might be well served telling people they just have to die for their BPL since emergency service and amateur spectrum isn't important.

    • I thought that internet-over-power lines was pretty much a dead concept - not simply due to the fact that you had to largely redo your power infrastructure anyways so that it doesn't filter out your data, but because by the very nature of modulating a signal on a high power wire, you're building the world's largest radio transmitter network, and flooding everything with radio interference.

      Why can't they can't just put a shield around the power wires, then ground the shield (a la coax)? shouldn't the Far

      • Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Rei (128717)
        The whole point of broadband over power lines is to make use of existing infrastructure. If you're going to make all new infrastructure, you might as well make it something designed to carry large amounts of data, like fiber bundles.

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jarich (733129) on Thursday July 07 2005, @01:22PM (#13005949) Homepage Journal
      First, there is a huge existing infrastructure. The existing power lines go everywhere.

      Second, coupled with voice over IP, this puts Google (potentially) in the ISP business and the telecom business.

      Lastly, this would catapult Google from the tenuous position of search engine king (just like Yahoo used to be) and into the dominant ISP, teleco, search engine, etc company.

      In other words, AOL, Microsoft and Ma Bell all rolled into one!

      • Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by garcia (6573) *
        From this [thestandard.com] article:

        While BPL has the potential to serve 13 million U.S. households in the next three to five years, interference problems and a reluctance from many electric companies to offer new services may slow its development, said Barry Goodstadt, vice president at market research firm Harris Interactive Inc.

        13 million homes are a "potential" in 3 to 5 years. Comcast has 21.5 million "potential" subscribers right now. I have a feeling that telcos have several million more "potential" subscribers.

  • Not Evil? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cayenne8 (626475) on Thursday July 07 2005, @01:01PM (#13005687) Homepage Journal
    I thought Google pledged to not do anything 'evil'.

    Hasn't this tech been show to be damaging to Ham radios? Something that is usually very helpful in times of emergency, when phones and sometimes power is even out?

    • So when the power is out, the IP over PowerLines will go down too, thus enabling them to coordinate their efforts and HAM it up. ...unless it's only a brownout and you're still broadcasting interference on the other side of the street.

      • Re:Not Evil? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by sgant (178166) <ksgant@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Thursday July 07 2005, @01:12PM (#13005827) Homepage Journal
        I see, so how is one going to practice this? Guess keep the equipment and the antennas up and invest 1000s of dollars into a hobby on the off chance that maybe you'll be able to help one day...but until that day it just sits there unused.

        Cool...guess you solved it!
        • Amateur radio is used daily in many public service capacities:

          Many, if not most SKYWARN groups use amateur radio to coordinate severe weather verification with the national weather service.

          Here in Michigan amateur radios operators are used to verify that the tornado sirens work.

          All hospitals are being equipped with shortwave radios for use during states of general emergency. During the big blackout the cell phone networks were a) overloaded then b) dead as the reserve power units ran out of juice.

          Ama

    • Re:Not Evil? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by sgant (178166) <ksgant@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Thursday July 07 2005, @01:09PM (#13005794) Homepage Journal
      Don't go there...if you look at the history of Slashdot they're anti-Ham radio for the most part. Their reasoning is why stop progress for something that only 600,000 people in the country do. You know, the needs of the many outway the needs of the few.

      Ham is very useful, but try telling that here. Expect to be flooded with people with these sentiments, and I hope I'm wrong about that.

      There is so many other ways to get broadband to even the most remote people that over the powerlines doesn't even need to be. Got a phone line? You should be able to get broadband. If not, do you REALLY think that BB over powerlines will be in your area instead?

      Oh well, it will be a major nail in the coffin that was the great and wonderful world of Ham radio. 100 years down the drain.
        • The thing is, this isn't ancient technology. It's still alive today and many people are still doing it.

          It's also needs no infrastruture. Nothing can "go down" to where you can't get out to someone else. The net can go down. Cell phones can go buh bye when you go out of signal area (which happens to me even now just driving from Michigan to Illinois...where you would think it would have constant signal).

          But this has been going on and on. You personally don't care and why should you, you're not in the hobby
    • BPL *also* interferes with public emergency service radios. So when there's an emergency, ALL the emergency responders can potentially be interfered with. What a great idea, eh?

  • Great.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Brad1138 (590148) <brad1138@yahoo.com> on Thursday July 07 2005, @01:01PM (#13005690)
    Now Godzilla will be taking my internet down as well.
    • I look forward to hearing voices communicating every time I walk past power lines. Really, we're just begging for God of the net to start messing with us through our Navis.

  • self install kits? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Nerftoe (74385) on Thursday July 07 2005, @01:01PM (#13005692)
    I wonder if power-line internet service offerings will feature "install yourself" kits? Perhaps this is one of the things keeping power-line internet from taking off - the installation procedure could be a bit tricky?
  • for their internet over broadband ventures.
    ...For a second, I thought Google was acting all ".com bubbly" by throwing good money after bad with "Internet over Power Lines." Glad to see it is not that, but rather a wise investment in something known as "Internet over broadband."

    Next, you're going to tell me that have that intraweb on cell-phones, too...

  • Its about time.... (Score:4, Informative)

    by eldawg (769959) on Thursday July 07 2005, @01:02PM (#13005698)
    Even though the technology may still need some polishing, it is already being pursued in Europe [pctalk.org].

  • BPL...not good (Score:3, Insightful)

    by VAXcat (674775) on Thursday July 07 2005, @01:02PM (#13005699)
    It's unfortunate that a company that wants to do no evil is investing in activity that will earn it the emnity of most every amateur radio operator in the country...
      • I'd love to see some links to this. This flies in the face of damn near everything I've heard about using power lines in this way, as it essentially turns them into large antennas. A few months ago, other links were provided that showed that this technology bleeds RF like crazy, so your claim is completely at variance to everything else I've read, and my understanding of the physics of using power lines in this way.

      • Re:BPL...not good (Score:4, Interesting)

        by srhuston (161786) on Thursday July 07 2005, @01:58PM (#13006393) Homepage Journal
        Any linkage to back that claim up? Or is this perhaps another case where the power company did their homework first, and deployed BPL in an area with nobody around to complain?

        I do have a few links that say otherwise though: here [arrl.org], here [arrl.org], and this one [arrl.org] which actually looks like a company trying to do it right [motorola.com].
      • Another AC writes (why won't any of these people say who they are?)
        >Manassas, VA adopted BPL last year and has shown demonstrations of folks
        >using HAM all throughout the city. No interference whatsoever.
        >AFAIK, of all of the commercial deployments, none have been shown to
        >negatively interfere with amateur radio. The claims of interference
        >seem like little more than FUD to me. Everybody wants something
        >to complain about.

        Well, you're quite documentedly wrong. I did Google manassas, va bpl [google.com]

  • Broadband (Score:4, Funny)

    by verloren (523497) on Thursday July 07 2005, @01:03PM (#13005710)
    "their internet over broadband ventures"

    Internet over broadband? Hmm, I could see that catching on...

  • Google? Powerlines? (Score:4, Funny)

    by FrontalLobe (897758) on Thursday July 07 2005, @01:03PM (#13005715)
    Wait... Does this mean I can search the web from my toaster finally?

  • Classic Homer simpson reloaded (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They've got the internet over broadband now?
  • This is quite disturbing.. Well it's obvious google doesn't care if yout radio doesn't work or your Over the air tv signals are no longer viewable. Anyone tried to watch tv with someone sitting just 5 feet from a nextel i7xx series phone? you can hear the tick tick tick of the timing signal. This can't be much better
    • It's not just Nextel phones that do this, and most common speakers will exhibit this (occasionally, I hear it on the speaker in the phone). One of my friends is with Cingular, and his does the same thing to nearby speakers.

  • Wireless (Score:5, Insightful)

    by loomis (141922) on Thursday July 07 2005, @01:08PM (#13005775)
    I find it interesting that in this day and age of moving towards transmitting signals without wires, no one was ever able to safely transmit power wirelessly ala Tesla's ideas. Without power lines, to latch on to, perhaps see more efforts focused on long-distance wireless internet?

    Loomis
    • Actually, what Tesla did can be done now-a-days and has be done over and over again in the past. The reason it isn't commercial is because A) You can't make money by giving enerby away, B) High power, low frequency transmissions would scew up our current spectrum and possibly cause biological harm (dont' know about that, just what I've read).

      If you want a demonstration, go under a high tension, high power line and lay down a bunch of cable. If you check with a voltmeter or a lightbulb, you can use that cab

        • Re:Wireless (Score:3, Informative)

          by KD5YPT (714783)
          Tesla is full of shit eh?

          Where do you think we got our AC generators from? Tesla.
          Sure he has his problem, but don't say he's shit just because his idea doesn't work too well.

          As for the inverse square law, he's fully aware of that. He's development revolves around attemp to get around the inverse square law (using the ionosphere as a conductor, use ionosphere as a container, uses earth itself, etc).
  • for their internet over broadband ventures

    Well, I'm glad someone's finally doing it!

    </sarcasm>

  • Cinergy serves Cincinnati which already has fierce competition between Cincinnati Bell's Zoomtown service (which I use at home) and Time Warner's Roadrunner service (which I use at work). The price has settled at about $45/mo (less with bundling). Now they compete on speed (3Mbps download 768 Kbps upload vs ~5Mbps max download and ? upload). It'll be fun to see what a third competitor will do to price and speed.

  • Follow SOP... (Score:3, Funny)

    by w0lver (755034) on Thursday July 07 2005, @01:08PM (#13005785) Homepage
    Let hope they follow the same plan as their other new products and have a looong free beta period... Somebody send me an invite!

  • Power line a poor choice for better avialabbily (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Eravnrekaree (467752) on Thursday July 07 2005, @01:29PM (#13006039)
    Power line technology has various problems, such as the fact that power lines were not designed to carry high frequency transmissions and tend to turn into giant antenna systems when they are used in such a manner, disrupting accessibility to radio services such as shortwave radio and amatuer radio. It also turns out to be a rather expensive technology to implement as well as being problematic, since transformers tend to absorb and block RF signals on the power lines, requiring expensive solutions to bypass them. It is to the point where it will be so expensive to implement that it would be better to just implement a fiber optic network, which would provide better bandwidth anyway.

    I think a much better and more effective, as well as higher quality solution for both bandwidth broadband avialability and the choice, and for maximum capacity, is to construct a shared fiber optic networks which could be used to carry telephone, cable tv, and internet. These systems should be owned and operated by local governments (who could contract out maintanence and construction to independant contractors if they wish) who would charge an access fee to fund the operatation the networks, and which would be open to all information service providers to provide their information services over them, such as multiple cable tv, phone and internent providers, giving people perhaps dozens more choices, assuring competition and choice for the consumer. This also would seperate the operation of the physical infrastructure from the information services, so one entity isnt controlling both the information services and infrastructure, which allows that entity to have a monopoly over the information services provided over the physical infrastructure. Instead access to the physical infrastructure would be avialable to all information services, like phone, internet and cable, and all of the information services and consumers would pool their resources to build one communications system which tends to be more efficient than every information service having to have its own information service, and it would make it eisier for smaller companies to enter the market and provide additional choices for the consumer since they do not have to fund the construction of another communications system for their exclusive use.

  • Why BPL is bad for radio transmissions (Score:4, Informative)

    by lugar (561993) on Thursday July 07 2005, @01:44PM (#13006204)
    For those who are looking for data on BPL and its effects on radio transmissions, this is a good place to start:

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

  • So Far So Good in Cincinnati (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 07 2005, @02:08PM (#13006510)
    I've been using Current Communications' service in Cincinnati since last November. The lowest tier of service (which I have) is 1Kbps (up and down) @ $26.99/mo., which I find adequate for casual internet use.

    I am also a beta tester for their VOIP service, which seems to work fine.

    Before signing up, I had read quite a bit about the RF interference issues, and I thought I'd give the service a try to gain a first-hand perspective.

    Based on my experience so far, I have not encountered any interference on the AM band on several radios I use regularly. I am not a regular shortwave listener, but I do have a small shortwave radio, and I can't really tell a difference since Current started up here.

    I really don't know if Current is doing anything different from other deployments of BPL technology, but I suspect they must be doing something to mitigate interference, or I would think I would have noticed it, or noticed some coverage in the local media.

    • I live in Cincinnati and I subscribe to Current's BPL service. Notwithstanding Slashdotters' speculation, there has been no epidemic of bad TV recpetion. I'm not a Ham operator but am not aware of any outcry there either. Oh, and Current's broadband service is fast, cheap, and reliable. I pay at least $10/mo less than comparable cable modem service, and I have never once had a service outage. I'd recommend anyone give this (awesome) technology a try before badmouthing it.

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