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Electric Companies Get Involved With Broadband

Posted by Zonk on Thu May 11, 2006 04:17 PM
from the who-isn't-these-days dept.
The Internet Networking Power
Billosaur writes "The Marketplace Morning Report on NPR has an interesting piece on how electric companies are getting into the high-speed Internet business with 'Broadband over Power Lines', or BPL." From the article: "By purchasing the right equipment power companies can quickly offer Internet service to millions of new customers. There are several pilot projects being launched in the US, including one in the Pittsburgh suburb of Monroeville. That service is being offered by Duquesne Broadband -- a spinout of the local power company.'"
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[+] Hardware: FCC's Duplicity On BPL Revealed 97 comments
eldavojohn writes "Ars has a summary of the curious events surrounding the death of broadband over power lines (BPL). We've discussed BPL's trials and advances here many times. The Federal Communications Commission's go-ahead was halted last year by a federal court, after a suit by the American Radio Relay League over claims of unacceptable radio interference from BPL. The DC Court of Appeals judge noted, 'There is little doubt that the [FCC] deliberately attempted to exclude from the record evidence adverse to its position.' The ARRL's FOIA request to obtain non-redacted documents finally bore fruit under the Obama administrations more open FOIA guidelines. The ARRL's preliminary analysis of the released documents point out a few critical areas where the FCC redacted data that is clearly adverse to the claims of BPL proponents. By rights, this ought to lay BPL to rest once and for all." A story at Broadband Reports notes that BPL is dying on its own, as most of the vendors who had been testing it "have since moved on to promote smart electrical grid functionality."
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  • Please wake me when it's done... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DaHat (247651) on Thursday May 11 2006, @04:19PM (#15312696) Homepage
    Sure the technology to be able to do this well keeps improving... I'm kinda getting sick of hearing about this and fiber to the curb every few months when it is no closer to wide scale roll out than it was 10 years ago when I first started hearing such ideas.

    Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have both, but please... quit trying to get my hopes up!
      • We have a small telecom company as a sponsor of ours, they are doing BOPL in this area at 200megabit to the house! Check out Corinex and you'll see this technology isn't theory anymore. We are using this technology to create a LAN at my boss's new multi-million dollar house. Well, its new to him, the problem is there is no wiring for network so we're using power adapters to hook up wireless access points as well as connect a few computers. The result is a fast network which even supports VLANs!

        The technolo

        • The technology is almost cheap too at $200 for a pair of adapters.

          Have you included the cost of repairing the system after the local HAM radio operators put an axe through the power lines? (BPL wipes out huge chunks of the RF spectrum)

          • Re:Please wake me when it's done... (Score:5, Informative)

            by Vancorps (746090) on Thursday May 11 2006, @06:44PM (#15313787)
            I would suggest you look at Corinex in particular, at 200megabit it doesn't cause any major interference. For that matter, here in Peoria we have a broad scale deployment of BOPL and considering my coworker is a ham enthusiast in the same town I find it odd that this fud is still being spread around. He's got no issues within a mile of the thing nor has the telecom company doing all the work had any issues reported to them. They are one of our sponsors so we generally talk to the people who would know. It makes sense that rf over the power lines would get amplified greatly but in practice it doesn't happen especially when you do it right at each substation. Our ISP runs fiber to each substation and then attached more or less a gateway that connects the fiber to the power lines.
  • Is finally being used by electric companies. How novel.

  • Would be ok if... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2006, @04:22PM (#15312723)
    The power line wasn't a giant freaking unshielded antenna! This tehcnology has been effecting communications gear all over the place. Its a very very bad idea in its current form.

    http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/ [arrl.org]

    • Re:Would be ok if... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dpaton.net (199423) on Thursday May 11 2006, @04:36PM (#15312883) Homepage Journal
      It's more than a bad idea, it's a forking NIGHTMARE. Even for non-hams like me, the radiated fields from the lines will cause all kinds of problems. BPL produces a horiffic amount of conducted line noise, in violation of the FCC's own regulations [fcc.gov], and further pollute an already overcrowded section of bandwidth (DC to light). BPL may be good for the power companies' profit margins, but it's bad for EVERYONE.

      And that's my professional opinion.

      -dave
      EE, currently working on EMC compliance
    • Actually, the newer stuff isn't anywhere near as bad as the stuff they were testing even a couple of years ago. Motorola and Current Technologies both have systems that avoid putting any HF on the MV lines (those long, unshielded ones that run along the highway and through neighborhoods). Motorola uses its Canopy wireless system, and Current uses low-band VHF (30-50MHz) coupled with HomePlug modems.

      That said, many of the BPL field tests are still being conducted with previous-generation equipment.

      It's int
      • Motorola uses its Canopy wireless system, and Current uses low-band VHF (30-50MHz) coupled with HomePlug modems.

        Are they paying for all the crashed radio controlled planes that run on 35MHz then?
          • No, he's quite right - he probably just doesn't live in the US like you. In the UK and South Africa (at least - I think there are also several other countries who use it), radio controlled aircraft are allocated to 35Mhz.

            All my radio equipment is 35Mhz and any Canopy Wireless system in the area would definitely make for some very short flights.
    • Harmonics [uwyo.edu] was a rotten problem in power lines since 1990 (when I last had to study the National Electrical Code, long before I did the computer thang for a living) - even back then you didn't get a perfect 60Hz sine wave, since things like televisions, blenders, industrial equipment, etc etc would introduce noise into the line at multiples of 60Hz (among others), which shortened the MTBF of, well... anything with a power supply or rectifier attached to it. IIRC (though I'm prolly wrong given the time span,

      • Re:Would be ok if... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2006, @04:39PM (#15312908)
        Do some Googling. The problem is exactly that the power lines are designed to transmit power at 50/60 Hz. BPL works by forcing these lines to transmit RF signals. The reason why BPL is such a technical disaster is that power lines and transformers don't act like proper RF transmission lines... they act like antennas.

        The right way to implement BPL is for the power companies to use their rights-of-way to run fiber to the customer premises.... or at least to the pole outside, where an 802.11 link handles the last 100 meters.

      • Re:Would be ok if... (Score:5, Informative)

        by bobthecow (67269) on Thursday May 11 2006, @04:43PM (#15312936) Homepage
        Do you mean to be comparing the speed of the data (Mbps) to the frequency of the powerline? Where are you trying to get at with that calculation?

        The issue at hand here is that powerlines are unshielded. They were never intended to carry RF, and act as very, very big antennas when they are used in this way.

        Once you load up a power line with a radio signal, you have the potential to start messing with communications all over the spectrum. The noisiest response to this has been from Amateur Radio operators, but government agencies who might be affected also think BPL is a bad idea. It's not a particularly good idea to knock out communications by the Red Cross, Salvation Army, and other emergency response agencies.

        To use an analogy, think about how the water lines in your house would respond if you pressurized them beyond their capacity. They'd leak, yes? Or how about using them to carry corrosive chemicals instead of water? They weren't designed to do that, and it will cause problems.
          • There is a BOPL deployment here in Arizona, Peoria more specifically and the radios work just fine. I'm a little confused where that idea came from. My coworker is a ham radio operator and guess what? He lives in Peoria about a mile from where they located their testbed. Boy was he pissed since its 200megabit. He begged our ISP to expand it a little more so he could get it. Our ISP is one of our sponsors so we actually have a bit of pull. Only problem was there was no fiber connecting his substation so they
            • > There is a BOPL deployment here in Arizona, Peoria more
              > specifically and the radios work just fine. I'm a little
              > confused where that idea came from.

              The first version they tried to deploy in the US caused severe interference.
            • Only a mile? Does he have line of sight to a friendly installation with access? If so, he could get something like 5-10 Mbps using primestar dishes - for up to ten miles. I'm thinking a couple of cantennas would more than do the job here, you could probably get 3 to 5 miles that way.

  • Municipal Power & Fiber (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mysqlrocks (783488) on Thursday May 11 2006, @04:24PM (#15312742) Homepage Journal
    Where I live (Burlington, VT) the city provides both electricity [burlingtonelectric.com] and fiber optic service [burlingtontelecom.net]. It's Interesting that it was more practical to run new fiber optics throughout the city than to use existing power lines, since the city already owns the electric department.
    • Dang, don't see many fellow Vermonters on here. Last I remembered Green Mountain Power wasn't city owned. I've been away for about 5 years so things may have changed. I do recall that there were strict pricing controls. Vermont has a lot of fiber in it already though so I wouldn't be surprised if they just got a really good deal on all the equipment. Connecting all the major cities of New England takes a lot of glass and thats good for VT! I remember getting DSL in the push back in 1996 and when I moved to

  • How does this work? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by iamlucky13 (795185) on Thursday May 11 2006, @04:25PM (#15312754)
    Previous discussion of broadband over powerlines that I've read discussed it as an alternative to wireless or wiring your home...really small networks that then plug into a traditional connection. I'm curious how you would handle multiple users on one line. You're not just running half a dozen or so connections into a hub and multiplexing the signals. The power grid is huge! Along those lines, what about capacitance and interference? Wouldn't those kill the range?
    • There's no reason they can't be tying into fiber at some points, maybe even running their own fiber parallel to high-tension lines, and putting concentrators at substations to take residental data connections and dump them over to the fiber for the longer haul. No idea how they ARE doing it, though, but that's a mission for google.
    • I'm curious how you would handle multiple users on one line. You're not just running half a dozen or so connections into a hub and multiplexing the signals. The power grid is huge!

      Any signal you put on the line is pretty much not gonna make it past the first transformer it hits, so it'll be limited to the phase you're connected to - probably not actually an especially big area.

      The BPL schemes that the power companies are pushing (which are doomed to failure because the power lines have a nasty habit of radi

  • More competition is better, whatever it is! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by postbigbang (761081) on Thursday May 11 2006, @04:27PM (#15312781)
    BPL advocates will tell you that it's not fttp. And it's not going to be at cable speeds for a long while, but has lots of possibilities.

    But here are the salient positive points:

    1) these guys are by their nature, net-neutral and while they're utilities, they don't live behind ancient telco models
    2) reliability is a serious culture within the power community; these guys have trucks and know how to use them
    3) the electrical utilities have the largest amount of unused communications easements and right-of-ways in the USA
    4) the utilities in the EU are riding this wave quickly; they go everywhere, while the old tired fat ex-PTTs slumber
    5) more competition keeps the telco and cable companies honest. We need alternatives.

    So, I say: party on, BPL!

  • Most power companies are required to buy extra electriciy if you generate more power for the grid than you consume. This usually only applies to folks with solar panels and other sources of power that end up contributing to the grid. They get to watch their power meters run backwards!

    I wonder if the same principle could be applied to net data flows! I would love to be paid by the power company for massive file sharing since I would be contributing more to the 'net than I consume.

    • They get to watch their power meters run backwards!

      Heh. Most of the time, the power co just dumps the power into a big load (read: resistor), because it's not worth the trouble trying to phase-shift the consumer-generated power to sync it to the neighborhood supply. Especially given the fact that the frequency can vary with load (e.g., during the summer, your power frequency may drop to 55-56Hz at 5:30 when everyone's running the A/C and the stove while making dinner). At least, that's what I was told wh
  • I would be very happy to have another alternative to Comcast. DSL is not an option in my neighborhood, and broadly available WiFi not even a glimmer. When my only current broadband ISP starts QoS traffic shaping that benefits them, not me, I want a new place to leave them for. After all, with satellite, I don't need them for TV either.
  • By purchasing the right equipment power companies can quickly offer Internet service to millions of new customers

    And they can start with purchasing a power station. I've heard rumors that the internets won't work without electric power.

  • ...in the boots of the telcos and cable companies. If broadband over the power grid were technically and economically doable, it eliminates the need for telcos if you have voip and for cable with a big enough pipe.

  • Before this can be rolled out, the power companies will want to run a massive national smear campaign against ham radio operators, you know, just to make sure no-one listens to them when they complain about interference.

  • and i was just reading (Score:5, Informative)

    by wherley (42799) * on Thursday May 11 2006, @04:38PM (#15312896)
    in the latest QST http://www.arrl.org/qst/ [arrl.org] about the FCC ignoring amateur radio ongoing complaints about BPL system interference.
    new BPL complaint here: http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2006/05/05/100/ [arrl.org]
    system operator response here:
    http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/files/COMTek .pdf [arrl.org]

  • And In Other News... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nom du Keyboard (633989) on Thursday May 11 2006, @04:39PM (#15312913)
    And in other news, the combined cable television industry announced today that it's possible to provide power-over broadband-lines. Their spokesman said:

    "What is coax but insulated copper conductor. With Edison's DC delivery methods, tried and proven over a hundred years ago, a single conductor with ground return has always been feasible. Now we will free you from the greedy power companies and their unfair monopolies one and for all. Bwahahaha!"

    The combined telcos have scheduled a news-conference for later this afternoon.

  • Broadband over Power Lines? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    That's shocking!
  • Marketplace is produced by American Public Media, not NPR. It often is broadcast alongside NPR shows by your local public radio station, but NPR has nothing to do with Marketplace.

  • The problems with BPL (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wb8wsf (106309) on Thursday May 11 2006, @04:51PM (#15313017)
    BPL is one of those things which sounds good or at least interesting
    at the start, but the deeper you go the less decent it gets.

    The problem boils down to the fact that a BPL system emits RF (radio
    frequency) energy, causing interference to entities that use those
    frequencies. The FCC has been put into an interesting spot here, as
    they realize that the problems generated by it are real, but are also
    being pushed by the Bush administration to move forward on this.

    Ham radio operators are definitely negatively affected by this. Hams
    by their nature deal with "weak signals", which the noise generated
    by BPL tends to clobber, making many of the "shortwave" (ie, below
    30MHz) bands less than useful.

    If you care to see a pretty good response to this go to www.arrl.org
    and look for BPL.

    This is a real horror for hams. Least anyone think that ham radio
    is out of date in this era of advanced technology, talk with officials
    down south who dealt with Katrina, or in Neq York City on September 11th.
    BPL pits big money interests against litterally amateurs, with the latter
    group figting back, and being at least partly successful, in getting
    the FCC to deal/recognize interference complaints, and getting these
    systems cleaner.

    What will happen, I cannot say. But I look to systems in Europe
    and Asia where broadband exists and doesn't use BPL, and see systems
    which offer far better service.

    --STeve Andre'
    amateur callsign WB8WSF
    • Least anyone think that ham radiois out of date in this era of advanced technology, talk with officials down south who dealt with Katrina

      Yeah but when the next Katrina comes along the power lines get knocked out, the RF interference stops, the hams work, usefulness restored, everyones happy right?
  • They're using WIRELESS technology. Read TFA! You'll see it there, plain as day.

    I doubt they even solved any of the original problems they brought to the table eons ago! The idea is that every OUTLET could have internet access. Everyone who has an existing electricity feed could get internet access (imagine third world countries, etc). You'll notice that the article says that without a "smart grid" it won't work in rural areas. A good chunk of the world is rural...

    Might as well invent a square wheel wh

  • Already Involved (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby (173196) on Thursday May 11 2006, @05:14PM (#15313195) Homepage Journal
    One of the problems with a website like Slashdot is that its editors aren't reliable for perspective on presentation of stories with a history, both in the world and in the site's coverage. BPL has been covered on Slashdot several times, as the electric companies have evolved their business proposition and dealt with technical, economic and political problems. But the story presented here "introduces" BPL without any of that perspective. The new Slashdot story/style presentations do better, at least eliminating pure duplicates, but the nanothin editorial depth leaves out the context that is part of the story, both on Slashdot and in the world. Consider this BPL story, and others, with an itchy google finger.
  • Asymptote: Always closer, never quite getting there. See: Broadband over Powerlines; BPL

    Shouldn't this have its own section and icon by now?
  • BPL seems like a loser of an idea due to interference issues, but we need SOME third party in the marketplace. The game theory works against net neutrality if there are two or fewer players, but it may work FOR net neutrality if there are at least 3. I'm betting on wireless, but I wish the BPL guys well and really just hope the some thrid party gets into the last-mile business ASAP.

  • BPL is teh ghey (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JPriest (547211) on Thursday May 11 2006, @06:54PM (#15313872) Homepage
    BPL is only being pushed because so many people are stupid enough to believe that if they have electricity, they will be able to get BPL.

    "quickly offer Internet service to millions of new customers" they say.

    This is not true. They can't run the service over high voltage lines.

    They have to fiber out to medium voltage (7,200 volts) lines and then offload from fiber ($$) to the unshielded lines.

    The lines may be 7,200 volts, but to comply with section 15 the data is transmitted somewhere closer to 1 volt.

    Emergency frequencies tend to be low because the low attenuation rate allows for greater travel. BPL being sent at 1 volt attenuates quickly so their workaround is to use EMRGENCY FREQUENCIES to transmit data on the power lines.

    Even at 1 volt it is enough to disturb radio and emergency communications because med voltage power lines are basically a big antenna.

    The problem with being only about 1 volt is that the signal must be cleaned and re-amplified every few hundred feed (more equipment, $).

    medium voltage lines are stepped down to 240 volt drops to peoples homes but the data could not survive this. The result is the need for a CT coupler (yes, more $) to bypass the transformer and again reinsert the signal onto the shielded line.

    When all is said and done you have a service that is expensive enough to run that it will no be a rural broadband solution.

    At best it will be available to areas that already have a choice between Cable, DSL, Fiber, and soon WiMAX.

    For the high maintenance costs of keeping BPL signal leakage from PBL deployments you could just run fiber right to the home.

    Also, BPL maintenance and inline equipment = network (read Power) outages.

    Besides, internet access is a very step for power companies. By the time they establish data centers, mail platforms etc. there will be a slew of better alternatives that won't cause power outages.

    Maybe they should instead focus on providing reliable power service or clean energy.

    As for the latest "We can monitor equipment with it" they already have technology in place to do that that. It is simply their latest ploy to get people to sign off on their raping the radio spectrum.

  • Internet Fools Gold (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Spazmania (174582) on Friday May 12 2006, @07:12AM (#15316458) Homepage
    I've said it before and I'll say it again: BPL is Internet Fools Gold. The power companies are going to keep pouring money in to this until PONS gets so far ahead of what's theoretically possible with BPL that they finally give up.

    Every power line is an antenna, fouling nearby radio with signals placed on it and absorbing signals from nearby radio and noise. Every transformer is a barrier that requires a rugged powered device to bridge the Internet signal for those four housholds. These are fundamental constraints to which no reasonable engineer expects to find a solution.

    • Nope (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Valdrax (32670) on Thursday May 11 2006, @05:01PM (#15313091)
      No, they're just steam-rollering ahead realizing that they have far, far more potential customers to reach than hobbyists (valuable hobbyists, but hobbyists nonetheless) to put out.

      I'd personally like the FCC to put an axe in this idea, but it's never going to happen. Once they get enough of a userbase, it'll be impossible to shut them down politically. Ham radio will just die and the public simply won't know what they've lost because they don't use it themselves.
    • Power over ADSL... Brillant!
    • completely diffrent hardware and wires.. this type of hardware was desigend to be used in conjunctions with AC power at mid voltages and high current

      telco's are set up for mid-low coltages and low current DC..

      that and there switching equipment would never work with somethign like this.. they would have to replace everything..

      when you look at power and signal detla on AC it doesn't care if it goes through a transformer or two the delta is still proportonal to the average voltage..

      it would just make no sence

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