I'm surprised IBM would touch this. BPL has been tested a lot and has failed a lot more. The power systems in the USA are designed almost opposite of what would be needed for this to work. Since the signals don't pass through transformers there has to be a repeater at *every* house to cross that bridge. That's some impressive amount of equipment to install and maintain. Some attempts to deal with that have been to place a wifi network in each neighborhood...with all of the security issues that would cause. In Europe they use one big transformer per neighborhood so they don't have as big an issue to overcome in making this work.
I'm REALLY surprised at this article still spouting the line that BPL is for rural use. Since the level of equipment required to install BPL is roughly equivalent to what is required to expand DSL this assumes that those of us in the boonies have power but don't have phones. Every test run of BPL has been in an urban location because that's where there are more consumers. The power industry stopped talking about rural expansion years ago; only congress and the FCC keep pretending that this is a feasible possibility. Note that in those urban test markets the power companies were unable to get customers and most have dropped the experiments. The intereference issues are real and harm more than just hams. Commercial and military radio are also impacted...and remember, if the BPL signal is radiated from those giant antennas (power lines) hanging from power poles all over town, how secure is your data? ________________________________ From: Ed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: The Unique Geek <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2008 1:14:51 PM Subject: [The Unique Geek] Broadband over power lines Pretty cool http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-10094866-76.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5 E --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Unique Geek" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/theuniquegeek?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
