Submitting a review for consideration is easy; please first read Slashdot's book review guidelines. Updated: 2008114 by samzenpus
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.
Near first post (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Near first post (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Near first post (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Near first post (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:MOD G-PARENT UP (Score:3, Interesting)
Distance Limits (Score:5, Insightful)
The fundamental technology is still distance limited. In fact, given natural and artificial interference factors from pre-existing spectrum users (not just ham radio operators, but everything on Shortwave) the distance limitations may be even more severe than those imposed by the telcos.
Hams aren't the only objecting group. They're merely the loudest. Most of the others, such as short wave broadcasters and trans-oceanic air traffic, Ship to shore Marine communications and the like don't have a constituency that the FCC will give much credence to.
Parent
Hams (Score:5, Insightful)
The article was light on the details of why the hams are opposed to this, except for the issue of whether or not it will interfere with their signals. If the BPL companies are offering to NOT interfere with the signal, why is there still opposition?
On another note, not to be a dick, but how can a bunch of hams form a "major" opposition against the power companies, IBM, Google etc?
Re:Hams (Score:3, Insightful)
They will oppose anything which further clouds their airwaves.
Re:Hams (Score:5, Insightful)
Many hams may be old and crusty, but they're not a group to give up easily.
Parent
Re:Hams (Score:5, Insightful)
We provide critical communication after a disaster. When four hurricanes hit my area a year ago, guess who handled communications between red cross shelters? Power was out... The phone lines were down... The cell towers were down... The wind was too fierce to send smoke signals. Amateur radio operators were just about the only method of communication.
And if BPL comes to town, there goes amateur radio. If the airwaves are blanketed with noise, nobody will invest in the expensive equipment, and of course they will not get any practice using it. And even IF the disaster wiped out the BPL noise in that area, a ham would have nobody to talk to, becuase the neighboring states would still have the noise.
So, let's assume that BPL does notch out amateur radio frequencies. Then, only some military channels, some shortwave channels, and some ship-to-shore radio frequencies are knocked out. No big deal, unless you happen to be on a ship or trying to listen to shortwave radio.
So, notching is not the answer. If you notch out ALL frequencies, then you can't transmit anything. And the more you notch out, the less bandwidth you have for sending data. And no matter WHERE your energies go, you will step on somebody's toes.
The frequencies below 30MHz (and sometimes all frequencies below 50MHz) have the wonderful quality of being able to travel entirely around the world. It is not uncommon for an amateur radio operator to talk to people thousands of miles away on at little at 5 watts. So, it is not hard to see that if BPL is introduced in every community in the USA, this will make the HF spectrum mostly unusable for THE ENTIRE WORLD. Actually, I am surprised that there is not some sort of treaty that would prevent this BPL nonsense.
Actually, I would love for the power companies to provide broadband. But they should have to do it over shielded cables, just like everybody else.
Parent
Re:Hams (Score:5, Insightful)
Emergency supplies in area B, where power is still on, can not recive signal from area A ham because area B BPL is still interfering with the signal.
There are two points in a point to point link, if one point has too much noise to hear the other, there is no way to communicate. So basically Hams in disaster areas would only be able to communicate with other Hams in other disaster areas.
Parent
Re:Hams (Score:5, Informative)
You could say it lessens the interference by 50% or so, and that's not enough because ANY increase in the "noise floor" (the background signal that exists on a frequency which a signal must overcome in order to be heard) makes it more difficult for ham radio operators to use the frequency spectrum that they are licensed to use.
One solution would be for ham radio operators to just increase the power they use. Unfortunately, most hams operate (on HF anyway) at their full power capacity. Also many hams enjoy the challenge of low-power communications of 5W or less (worldwide communications are possible on under 5W).
The principle of the thing is that why should a commercial venture be able to do the things that, so far, no one has been allowed to do: emit RF across such an immense spectrum of frequencies, including those for which others have what the FCC calls "primary" usage granted to them.
The ARRL has said that they do support a Motorola solution because it does not add any interference to the ham radio frequencies. So not all BPL is bad. Ham radio operators are opposed to those that are bad.
Parent
Re:Hams (Score:3, Interesting)
But then, hams are pretty vocal about keeping the status quo. The FCC has issued a statement that they intend to remove the morse code requirement from all levels of ham radio licensing.
It's a firestorm in the hams-on-Internet world, as some are extremely vocal (with very poor grammar) about keeping "the rif-raf" out with the hurdle of a morse code test for the HF bands. You'd think the sky was falling...
The FCC is discussing what kinds
Re:Hams (Score:4, Insightful)
Know what this sounds like? The September that Never Ended [wikipedia.org].
Parent
It's NOT a noise floor problem... (Score:5, Interesting)
What the real big problem is that the BPL systems are largely interfering with a piece of spectrum that has really good propagation characteristics. It's used by everyone for emergency communications worldwide in the case of a disaster; not just Hams have a problem with this- FEMA and other orgs like them does too.
What pisses me off about all of this is that there's no real need for this BS- BPL can be done, done well, and it won't interfere with any critical services when it's done.
Corridor Systems [corridor.net] has developed signal launchers and repeater systems to allow them to transform each line on a pole into a 10+ Mbit segment using 802.11 technology. This is accomplished by turning each of the lines on a power pole into a G-line waveguide (yes, you CAN do that sort of thing) that propagates the microwaves from an 802.11 system along the surface of the wires...
Parent
Re:Hams (Score:5, Informative)
is a graph of the licensed frequencies that some hams think that the unlicensed BPL technology will pollute (blacked out).
Hams are fond of shortwave because it allows people to communicate around the globe (not only line-of-sight).
Parent
Re:Hams (Score:5, Informative)
Firstly, there are a fairly large number of licensed operators. Not everyone is active in the hobby, but it is the number of licensed operators that the ARRL (American Radio Relay League -- Amateur Radio's main 'club', so to speak) uses when confronting the FCC and other regulatory bodies (including Congress) about issues that are a concern to Amateur Radio.
Secondly, as previously reported on Slashdot (no, I cannot find the article at the moment) the BPL companies' attempts to "notch out" the part of the BPL signal that interferes with Amateur Radio transmissions have not been very effective.
Thirdly, while BPL is certainly a good idea in theory, and I for one would welcome our new BPL overlords if they can dispose with the interference on the Amateur Radio bands, there are still technical details to work out before it can be used harmoniously in conjunction with existing services, including Amateur Radio.
Remember, Amateur Radio serves a critical role during emergencies to provide communication when other means are not available. If those power lines go down there will be no interference, but what if they are still up and there is a major emergency? Also, many Amateur bands are close to other public service bands. Yes, I know that the police are using cell phones now, but unless there is something that allows the cell towers to give priority to the police phones over my phone they police may be unable to communicate in an emergency.
I know our local ambulance service uses radio. So does our fire service. BPL will interfere with them as well, though not to the same extent because they are shorter range.
A little interference is not such a big deal with shorter range communications like the local fire and ambulance, but when you are trying to push a signal across the country, that small amount of interference is a major issue.
I'm sure I'm going to get flamed for this, but such is life. These are the main issues to the best of my understanding. Again, I would love to see BPL work. I live out in the boonies and I can't even get cable, never mind DSL.
Parent
Re:Hams (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, that very point was recently demonstrated in London. From this article [com.com]:
In the immediate aftermath, a statement from the U.K.'s largest network operator, Vodafone, said that an excessive number of calls had caused outages. The operator consequently set aside capacity for phone calls to emergency services.
"Following the major incident in London today, Vodafone London switches are at capacity (which is very rare), so we're having to go into 'access overload' procedures, which means freeing up a proportion of capacity across London to ensure the police and emergency services can communicate," the company said.
Parent
Re:Hams (Score:5, Insightful)
The BIG reason power companies want BPL is so that THEY can use it for reading your meter. They want to make your electric meter to be adressable and able to be read over the internet. They also want to have teh transformers and what not be able to report their status over it as well. BPL is about cutting some costs for electrical companies and it's just a bonus that they can add ISP to thier hat as well.
Parent
Re:Hams (Score:5, Interesting)
Er...if BPL is up in said emergency, and ham fails, then why not just use the BPL connection?
Also, consider that once BPL comes around, it probably won't be long before the same company sells digital phone over the same lines. Therefore, there will be internet and phone communications as long as BPL signal is up, and if lines or the signal are down, then ham can cut in.
Then, Gorkon wrote: The BIG reason power companies want BPL is so that THEY can use it for reading your meter. They want to make your electric meter to be adressable and able to be read over the internet. They also want to have teh transformers and what not be able to report their status over it as well. BPL is about cutting some costs for electrical companies and it's just a bonus that they can add ISP to thier hat as well.
Sounds great. I'd rather have them read my meter over the internet than have them snooping around in my yard. That's better privacy. Also, while meter readers will be out of a job, it will create IT jobs -- and IT labor demand benefits me, as well as many other slashdotters.
And if I could get some competition for cable internet, which is the ONLY broadband available in my rural location...that sounds like a win-win-win situation! Damn the ham, full speed ahead!
Parent
Re:Hams (Score:3, Informative)
The real problem w/ BPL is that using it for long haul requires a costly investment by the utilities that has not been discuss
Re:Hams (Score:5, Informative)
Because the current definition of "not interfering with" is based on fairly loose standards, because BPL noise could ruin the opportunity to use other parts of the RF spectrum in the future, but mainly because power-cabling is unshielded and currently so inefficient at broadband frequencies that they will initially have to use alot of signal, and radiation will be a given, regardless of what's promised.
Think of this as background noise (eg like your neighbour's air conditioner). It may be quiet, but its noise still prevents you from hearing the birds clearly, the breeze in the trees, the buzz of the bees, etc. BPL radiation will reduce our ability to detect faint RF signals. When the extraterrestrials finally get around to thanking us for the LP on Voyager, we won't be able to hear them.
On another note, not to be a dick, but how can a bunch of hams form a "major" opposition against the power companies, IBM, Google etc?
Well, that's the problem. Maybe we need a "sierra club" or "greenpeace" to act as watchdogs on our RF spectrum...
I do believe that BPL is probably inevitable, though... so, sometime in the future, when most of the power grid is adapted for this, and all new AC-powered devices have BPL filters built-in, then the BPL radiation should be less.
Parent
Apparently? (Score:5, Informative)
And anyone else who uses any kind of radio. BPL still has massive radio interference problems, fullstop. Every trial so far has resulted in cancellation of services because the interference ruins too many other things.
Once again it'll be announced, it'll be trialled, it'll fail. I said it almost every other time someone else comes up with this too good to be true notion.
Re:Apparently? (Score:3, Informative)
Cancellation? (Score:3, Informative)
I've actually had BPL in the Allentown, PA area for a year now. What cancellation?
Sounds like a good thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Lower Prices? (Score:4, Interesting)
The Trinity (Score:3, Funny)
Its like the Trinity of Evils controlling all of the Broadband access.
Always just a short time until... (Score:3, Insightful)
10 years ago (Score:5, Informative)
Re:10 years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.oni220.pt/oni220.htm [oni220.pt]
I'm told other european countries are also deploying it. The upstream is massive compared to similar ADSL offerings, instead of 8:1 it's a 2:1 ratio! Great for eMule
Powerline internet is a very attractive option in countries where the telephone lines are owned by a giant monopolist telecom.
Parent
Third option?! (Score:3, Funny)
BPL is great idea (Score:5, Informative)
Ham Operators Know (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course. It's the ham operators that actually understand the potential for BPL to cause harmful RF interference. The rest of the world won't care until it affects them personally. Ignoring the advise of ham radio operators is like ignoring the advise of the bomb squad when there's a bomb in a subway. Ok, so it's not as drastic, but it's still quite silly.
Not just HAM radio... (Score:5, Informative)
Tradeoffs (Score:3, Interesting)
DSL carriers no longer have to share thier lines with everyone else, so all the little guys may whither and die. Here comes a new technology to rescue! And it comes through your powerlines! However...
This idea still rubs me the wrong way when I think that a blackout will leave me without my desktop AND internet access through what's left of my laptop battery...
Already available in England (Score:4, Informative)
Similar technology has been around (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not up to par on the technology used in the X10 devices, but it can't be all that dissimilar to sending any kind of digital "internet" signal over the power lines as well. Actually I'm surprised it took this long to surface (granted I haven't been scouring the net looking for this information either.)
powerline dead in germany for years (Score:5, Informative)
According to RWE it was shut down because some frequencies used by powerline were reserved for security services. The real reason was though that almost nobody used it - RWE had only some 200 paying customers - because internet access via ADSL was much cheaper and in both Muelheim (I used to live there back then) and Essen widely availiable.
Old News (Score:4, Informative)
More than Web (Score:3, Funny)
Editorial note: Read with heavy sarcasm
See and hear BPL interference (Score:3, Informative)
Vid:
http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/aud-vid.htm
Sound: http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/aud-vid.htm
We have it here in Linz, Austria, and it's crap (Score:3, Interesting)
The fastest thing you get is 768/375 kbps up/down, costing you EUR 69,- per month. Compared to that, Liwest, a local cable TV/internet provider, gives you 6/1.5 mbps up/down for the same money.
Another negative side effect is that certain radio frequency are being disturbed by it, and Linz AG tried suing people that put measurement results of these disturbances online.
We don't NEED it! (Score:3, Informative)
Security, anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
The power companies that implement this would have to provide significant signal encryption well beyond anything that is currently done by other carriers.
AHidden Reason for BPL (Score:4, Insightful)
BPL a HAMs prespective (Score:5, Informative)
Current BPL technology is a kludge at best, it is the equivalent of duct tape and bailing wire. The interference that is created doesn't just effect the ham bands, it effects every service that is found between 1.8-80 MHz. The "interference mitigation" card is pure bull shit. For non hams how would you feel if I developed a Internet delivery method that disrupted your cell phone service? And every time you attempted to use your cell phone you disrupted your neighbors Internet access.
BPL is a bad idea, the laws of physics will never make it viable or economical, how many of you would get pissed off if I was constantly disrupting your Internet service for minutes or hours with my HF transceiver when I drive through town, I know I would.
We aren't whining. (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I think that any town that buys this stuff is going to get stuck with a bunch of junk that they don't understand. Especally when the company they contract with goes out of business or gets bought out. This sounds like a great oppertunity for the fly-by-night folks.
Parent
Re:and before you all start whining... (Score:5, Interesting)
1. If they didn't install it underground to start, it's not going to get there any time soon (at least not in the US). I know there are probably exceptions to this rule, but there aren't that many in the vast majority of the country. If lines were put above your head, they're going to stay there.
2. When you have lines that are underground, they get damaged less often, which is a good thing. When they do, though, you can be without Utility['$foo'] for quite some time. I have a friend who lived in a brand new neighborhood with underground cable lines for TV and internet surrounded by people still working with the same old structures. And when something went wrong, it could take up to a month until they could watch TV or check their email in their own home.
So without a fast enough maitenence crew to service them, underground lines can be quite a hazard.
Parent
FUCK Ham radios? How about FUCK corporate control? (Score:5, Insightful)
In case you haven't thought about it yet, there is nothing "free" or "egalitarian" about BPL. It will be under corporate control, accessible only to those who can/will pay for it. Contrast this with amateur radio, which is more or less the last vestige of non-corporate, decentralized, communications technology left in existence. Anyone who can pass a simple test can get on the air and communicate worldwide without any dependence on power companies, telecom giants, or huge media conglomerates.
Destroying public access to the radio spectrum via BPL is just one more move that will keep people dependent on corporations for EVERYTHING. Don't you think that individuals should have SOMEway to communicate and disseminate information that doesn't depend on big business?
Parent