IBM Bringing Powerline Broadband Back? 141
KindMind writes "IBM, in partnership with International Broadband Electric Communications, appears to be bringing back
powerline broadband back from the dead.
This time, the idea is to build out in rural areas not currently serviced by broadband, and isn't for competing with other broadband solutions.
From the article: 'Their strategy is to sign up electric cooperatives that provide power to sparsely populated areas across the eastern United States. Rather than compete toe-to-toe with large, entrenched cable or DSL providers, IBEC is looking for customers that have been largely left out of the shift to high-speed Internet.'"
Elusive market. (Score:3, Interesting)
This will also capture the market on all those people who live too far from any hub to get DSL and have free/stolen cable so can't get that!
Recently declared extra-dead? (Score:4, Interesting)
Techdirt [techdirt.com] recently asked if we could finally declare BPL officially dead. I guess not!
There was great concern in the radio control modeling community about potential interference from BPL. In fact, a significant amount of fields are underneath or near these powerlines in the "wasted" space where no one wants to build houses. I recall in 2004 or so there being significant email/forum traffic, particularly from those clubs with sites very close to powerlines or from RC Glider pilots that fly long distances from view, toward the horizon, where planes are susceptible to inteference. It was predicted that there was plenty of potential for concern.
Apparently with the concept dying off, so did the concern from RC pilots. I found a post as recently as 2006 where there was found to be little cause for concern (gmarc.com [gmarc.com]) using a spread spectrum analyzer.
Re:Why others failed (Score:4, Interesting)
I would like to see that happen in Australia too. Telstra have had too much of a monopoly on infastructure for too long and they always leave out rural areas. Sure they have their new 3G network but they overcharge to the point people working in small towns (who dont make as much money as city folk) cant afford it.
Re:Hmm. (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm a ham too, but it looks like the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) is doing pretty well at keeping BPL off of ham frequencies. However, the ARRL is not standing up for those who want to listen to international short wave broadcasts. These are on frequencies that are allocated for this purpose by international treaties, and by allowing interference on these frequencies the FCC is effectively denying Americans the right to hear news and ideas from other countries.
Rural Alberta is well served by wireless providers (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Technical problems still exist, why not WiMax? (Score:2, Interesting)
Why not use WiMax? It's higher bandwidth, requires less infrastructure overall to install (since you don't have to bypass transformers, etc.) and works for mobiles.
Wimax has it own issues too. I am posting this on my Wimax connection in semi-urban Bangalore. While I have no issues with my connection as I live with-in 300m from the tower and the tower is "line-of-sight" from my antenna, I know a lot of people who are completely dissatisfied with it.
I am not sure if it is because of the bad implementation by my ISP, or its the Wimax standard itself, but if the distance between the wimax tower and the subscriber exceeds 400 m, the connectivity becomes really bad.
And presence of trees between the tower and our antenna greatly degrades the signal strength. (Microwaves are absorbed by water)
And latency would be yet another issue.
Re:Why others failed (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Why others failed (Score:4, Interesting)
When I lived in anaheim, just a mile and a half from disneyland, we were unable to get DSL. Apartments across the street were able to get it, but we weren't.
People can say all they want about government screwing things up when the run them, but fed/state/local govs would do a hell of a lot better getting broadband to the masses.