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Re: Europe experience IBM bringing broadband over power line to rural America

From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 07:35:05 -0500


Begin forwarded message:

From: "Erich M." <me () quintessenz org>
Date: November 13, 2008 9:25:57 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Re: IBM bringing broadband over power line to rural America 



The rest if you wish for IP.


From: Rahul Tongia <tongia () cmu edu>




Virtually all claims on rural solutions are hype, since it needs
repeaters. These are $$. At that point, why not repeat DSL or other
solutions.


Well, I can just tell you briefly what happened to "powerline
communications" here in Europe.
After much hype in 1999 and a row of following test implementations plus
an annual hype - internet from the jack, so easy!  -  big shots like
Siemens dropped the development of powerline technology around 2003 AFAIR. 

Why?

Because the Red Cross, government disaster agencies plus the armed
forces vetoed. Powerline modems use the [poor] 30 MHz spectrum of
shortwave for their datastreams and those are modulated onto a twisted
pair of copper wire.

Not shielded aginst HF, of course, as that power network supply was
deployed to operate only  on 50 Hz  [Or sixty, yes, if you wish ;]

So, that is anyway in a techical sense an "antenna".

That means powerline multiplexing is broadcasting all over the full
shortwave spectrum, whenever there is data traffic, via antennae that
might be  as long as the wires are from your home to the next junction

Lambda quadruple or what? ;)

Unfortunately that very spectrum is used by all disaster
fallback-systems, armed forces, aid agencies etc. around the world. If
nothing works any more the shortwave links can provide a smallband but
_very_ resilient network.

All you need is a car battery, a laptop, a shortwave transceiver and any
antenna to participate in that network.

In tiny Austria that is one of the worlds most oversupplied markets with
GSM cell phones  [120 or so percent penetration]and 3g-data-access [a
third of all internet access]we had two big cases of disasters in 5
years when shortwave was the only means of communication.

What we learnt: a mountainfall in the alps can set a large skiing
ressort offline there. No power, no landline, no mobile.
Only shortwave worked.

Imagine, in the next valley would be exactly that utility located
connecting the "rural communities to the net via powerline".
Servus
Erich











For some recent industry news on this, see:
IDC Insight on Utilities – BPL is Like Zombies, Dead, but not Going Away 
(Aug. 2008)
[http://image.exct.net/lib/fefa127176670c/d/1/InsightsOnUtilities_Aug08.pdf ] 


My webpage (publications link) below has some more on BPL.

Rahul

************************************************************************
Rahul Tongia, Ph.D.
Senior Systems Scientist

Program in Computation, Organizations, and Society (COS)
School of Computer Science (ISR) /
Dept. of Engineering & Public Policy

Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA
tel: 412-268-5619
fax: 412-268-2338
email: tongia () cmu edu
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rtongia



David Farber wrote:

Begin forwarded message:
*From: *Ari Ollikainen <Ari () olteco com <mailto:Ari () olteco com>>
*Date: *November 12, 2008 5:11:09 PM EST
*To: *johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com
<mailto:johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com>
*Subject: **Re: [johnmacsgroup] Fwd: [IP] IBM bringing broadband over
power line to rural America*
*Reply-To: *johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com
<mailto:johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com>
At 4:33 PM -0500 11/12/08, David Chessler wrote:
For years, people have hoped broadband-over-power line technology, or 
BPL,
would allow power companies to become the third alternative in the
broadband market, competing against cable operators and telephone
companies. But technical limitations and interference issues with local emergency radios and short-wave ham radios have stood in the way of mass 
adoption.

snip

Before you get all excited, the article, toward the end, says:
"... The BPL movement was also dealt a blow earlier this year when a
federal appeals court sided in part with amateur radio operators who
challenged FCC rules designed to speed the nascent Internet service's
rollout. The judges in the case sent the rules back to the FCC with
instructions to clarify is reasoning for its rules and to publicize
its studies more fully.
While IBM and IBEC have the right idea when it comes to focusing on
rural and underserved markets, it seems like they still have an uphill 
battle in overcoming interference issues..."
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