Unique Broadband Over Powerline Project Planned For Mosques

Lucas123 writes "Broadband over powerline (BPL) provider Velchip is heading up a project that will offer 60 million very unique network users an unlimited high speed Internet connection of 224Mbps at a cost of only around RM5 ($1.58) per user per month. That's the cheapest, fastest internet connection in the world. The network is slated for use in the $14 billion 'Smart Mosque' project, which will be rolled out over three years in Indonesia and will link together 400,000 mosques. To add some perspective, in the US Verizon FiOS currently offers up to 30 Mbps downloads and 5 Mbps uploads starting at $42.99 a month. BPL modems use existing electrical power lines to deliver high speed Internet access and data transmission."

Whoa there Nelly!

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

That's the cheapest, fastest internet connection in the world.

No. It's not the fastet, because it doesn't exist.

To add some perspective, in the states Verizon FiOS currently offers up to 30 Mbps downloads and 5 Mbps uploads starting at $42.99 a month.

Yes, they do. Right now. Who knows what Verizon will be offering when (if) these guys get this network going. Awesome. The US still has better internet access than much of the third world.

Re:Whoa there Nelly!

[Anonymous Coward]

"We're sorry Verizon doesn't offer FiOS service in your area. However, please take a look at the Verizon services listed below that may be offered where you live."

Maybe one of these days. Yeah, like when I retire.

Spec needs to be clearer

[kg261]

Well it's not clear from the article if it's 224Mbps for all 60 million users. Also, the premises could have 224Mbps locally, but the end to end a fraction of that.

Could someone enlighten me?

[Paktu]

Why would you need high speed internet at a mosque of all places? Who goes to a church, synagogue, temple, Scientology brainwashing center, etc. to access the Web?

Re:Unlimited?

[catwh0re]

A fast connection to your ISP, doesn't mean you'll have a fast Internet experience.

While this will no doubt allow the ISP to deliver cache/proxy data very quickly, it will not be financially viable to provide very fast live-internet down this pipe. E.g anything that can be classified as a web-application will probably still be quite average/slow speeds.

The price comes about from using an existing infrastructure, as you know the biggest cost in rolling out a network is the transmission medium. (Especially if it's not your expense to maintain it.)

Re:Could someone enlighten me?

[monkaru]

In much of the world mosques, Buddhist temples and\or Catholic churches are the only places the locals can get a proper education. Ultra high speed internet could be extremely useful to them when divvied up among thousands of students and religious scholars.

bpl is a hoax

[eggled]

Any power engineer worth his salt knows the power lines can be modeled as an RLC network... creating losses. These have been optimized for low frequencies (50-60 Hz). Once you get above 1 kHz, your signal won't propogate more than 500 feet. 1MHz and you're lucky to get 50 feet. BPL doesn't actually use the copper line as a waveguide, but creates a rude radio transmitter in the GHz range, which can cause all kinds of trouble. The reason they're trying this abroad is that it's already been rejected outright in the US.

Re:Unlimited?

[Dan541]

To be honest it woulden't surprise me if that was a primary intention of this network.

~Dan

Ok so the worth of freedom to slashdot users

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Is less than 200 mbit. Separation of religion and state is probably worth even less.

Great to know.

Note for the Slashdot Grammar Council

[lancejjj]

60 million very unique network users

I can make the argument that a particular network design is "very" unique, suggesting that the design has "many distinctive attributes". Many grammar weenies would vehemently disagree with me.

But I have a tough time understanding that there could be 60 million "very" unique network users. I'd suppose that they'd just be unique.

Re:It'll never happen

[Goody]

Besides, copper telephone lines used for ADSL aren't shielded either.

Twisted pair copper is self-shielding; it's one of the reasons why we use it today in telephony instead of the old open straight wire.

Re:bpl is a hoax

[Goody]

What you're talking about is PLC which is the low frequency predecessor to BPL that is used for grid control functions. I think PLC goes up to about 500 khz. That technology is proven, works fairly well and doesn't interfere with radio spectrum. Many companies are using it for automatic meter reading systems (AMR), a market that BPL has been wanting to break into, though I believe hasn't due to overall costs. The original poster is essentially correct about the properties of powerlines not being suited for broadband. BPL uses radio frequencies from 1.8 Mhz to about 88 Mhz, depending on the system and capacity. These frequencies are severely attenuated on the lines and the lines act like a natural antenna, radiating them into the adjacent area. BPL signals have been detected up to a mile or two away from the lines and NTIA modeling showed that aircraft frequencies would probably be affected about 20 miles away. The FCC implemented mandatory frequency notching to protect aircraft frequencies and vendors have also designed optional frequency notching to protect other frequency bands when the carrier deems it necessary. From a market standpoint, BPL is at a severe disadvantage because the underlying technology just can't scale due to its many technical issues. After over ten years of development abroad and five years of a well-funded marketing and FCC-lobbying effort, there are only a handful of commercial BPL systems in the US and FCC reports show customer numbers below 10,000. BPL is included in the FCC's "Other" category, which should tell something about how insignificant it is. However, I think you'll see some traction in dirt poor countries where any bandwidth and any quality of service is acceptable and the wireless spectrum issues are ignored.

Re:Whoa there Nelly!

[Saxmachine]

The US still has better internet access than much of the third world.

You say that like it's an achievement to be proud of.

Re:Unlimited?

[memorycardfull]

The story says that the connections are expected to to enhance economic growth and internet literacy, which makes sense to me. It makes me uneasy to hear insinuations from presumably intelligent people that a developing and/or Muslim nation has little need for broadband except as a weapon. The story about ambition to use the internet as a weapon is over here: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/02/1734212 [slashdot.org]

Re:Why?

[notabaggins]

Why would a mosque need internet access? Isn't it suppose to be a place of worship, not an internet cafe?

In poor areas, the church or mosque or what have you is often also the center of community life. They don't have all the options available to urban first worlders. You still often see this even in the US today in small, rural areas. It was even more common in our agrarian past when Sunday was your only day off and the one big chance to go into town just to socialize.

I suspect this is why mosques hold such sway in their communities. Far as a community "center", there isn't anything but the mosque. Your only social and community life revolves around that institution.

fritz their brains with unshielded RF

[johnrpenner]

i sure hope they don't fritz their brains by exposing themselves to that much HARSHLY modulated unshielded RF energy...

Re:Isn't "Smart Mosque" an oxymoron?

[budgenator]

You seem to have glossed over the point that Islam, Judaism and Christianity all worship the same God.

Re:Whoa there Nelly!

[asuffield]

Why don't we have better internet access than ALL of the third world, if not the best internet access, period?

Because bad internet access is more profitable. If everybody had gigabit lines to their homes, it would be very hard to sell "faster" business lines to businesses at an inflated cost. By artificially limiting the low end of the market, they inflate the value of the high end, and hold the whole thing together by passing laws to block any competition. Isn't capitalism grand?

Re:The news headline and article are bullshit.

[aliquis]

If that's the case when cool, except whenever some religous moron decide that whatever religion they have are wrong their Internet connection will be screwed. Connection reset by Jesus?

Thanks for the information.

I'd be *delighted* to get close to max speed. . .

[JSBiff]

out of my current Internet connection. I don't get these broadband p!ssing contests. Such and such a country leads/trails the world in broadband connection speeds blah blah.

As the parent said, a fast connection to your ISP is relatively meaningless. I currently have TimeWarner RoadRunner cable. I can't complain about it *too* much. Overall it provides a pretty decent internet experience.

But, I know that the maximum download speed I ever got was somewhere around 6000 kbps (downloading a tv show from Amazon.com's Unbox service, and it surprised the hell out of me cause I had no idea the cable connection could even theoretically support that high of a speed), but most of the time, I don't get anywhere *close* to that. My maximum upload speed is somewhere between about 300-500 kbps (I haven't figured out exactly what it is yet).

However, in practice, most sites on the Internet are not able to push bits to me fast enough over the Internet to come anywhere close to making use of the speed I currently have. Getting another 100 mbps isn't going to help me *at all*, most of the time. A *good* server can usually send data to me at a rate of 200-400kbps. Bittorrent sometimes gives me 300-500kbps downloads, but more often than not, it's like 60kbps. When I'm uploading/seeding with Bittorrent, I rarely see Bittorrent's upload bandwidth top out higher than about 15 kbps (does TimeWarner throttle Bittorrent, or is there some other factor to blame here? I think I *should* be able to upload data to other computers at about 250-300 kbps, but never actually see that).

Anyhow, I won't care about a faster connection to my ISP until that connection is almost constantly saturated. I'd also rather see R&D/Investment go towards giving users a bit more upload capacity. The mindset that residential users shouldn't be hosting servers is kind of stupid, I think. Sure, most won't, but I'm pretty sure I don't have to argue the point too much on Slashdot that those who want to should be able to.

Cow excrement

[JokoSembung]

As an Indonesian I can assure you that this is 100% pure undiluted Indonesian-made bovine manure. Currently the best available consumer level unlimited internet is offered by the government owned phone company. For $75/month you get an advertised 384kbps down and 64kbps up. More likely, on a good day you'll get 30KByte/s and 5KByte/s. That's shamefully slow, and it only started a couple of years ago. A 224Mbps line for every user bwahahahhahahahah, I'd be surprised if there's that much bandwidth for the whole country right now. Our government workers clocks in at 10am and clocks out at 2pm. This is including a 2 hour lunch. These folks can't keep the traffic light running correctly for more than a couple of days, let alone roll a nation-wide cutting edge broadband. If you still don't believe me. The same Information minister who is most likely the source of this idiotic bragging, a week ago decided to roll out free internet on mosques. And to keep this intention purely educational wanted to block porn at the ISP level. (Block porn, now *THAT* always work). And his idea to implement this is to block all forums requiring the users to be 18 years or older. Because apparently all forum with age check contains nothing but pictures of naked women (and men). Please folk, this ain't no Japan or Scandinavia.