[lug] OT power line communication

[BOF]

Paul E Condon wrote:

>HF is 3 to 30 MHz. VHF is 30 to 300MHz. Are you aware of any technical
>reason why new developments might make use of these frequencies on
>open wires possible? Is this *really* what the FCC is proposing to
>test? And not really much bandwidth anyway. It sounds crazy. Unless,
>of course, it will screw more Democrats than Republicans. (Not likely.
>The same laws of physics apply. But who knows what they think.)
>

There are no new developments that I know of: the BPL idea is several 
years old, and with the recent large amounts of money to be found in 
providing high-speed service to the home (witness the fight between 
Comcast and Qwest in Denver, in which Qwest has this month halved its 
rates to attract/retain customers), has apparently cropped up again as a 
money maker.

This page does a pretty good job of describing the problems and the conflict

    http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,114135,00.asp

Not mentioned in this article is that Japan trialed BPL and had to stop 
it because of problems. See  
http://www.jarl.or.jp/English/4_Library/A-4-1_News/jn0208.htm.

And note how disingenous the Current Technologies spokesman in the 
article is being when he claims that his company's technology, HomePlug, 
does not interfer with radio. This is because Homeplug is the part 
inside the home connection and is heavily insulated. He mentions nothing 
about the interference outside the home on the power lines to get the 
signal to Homeplug. Certainly, Current Technologies webpage 
(http://www.currenttechnologies.com/about/history.html) makes some wild 
claims about BPL in regards to its capabilites: I don't believe that 
video is yet a working option. There is also apparently much about 
deploying BPL that the BPL industry is not saying. From comments on the 
Denver Post article from a Ham forum:

    Small isolated towns [in Colorado] are probably the worse suited for
    BPL due to its architecture. BPL has less of a range than DSL and
    cable. It requires repeaters every 200m or so, each of which are in
    the $4k to $5k range. Everyone seems to be under the impression that
    BPL is "plug and play" on the utility side, but it's far from that.
    It's not a long haul technology, so all of the traffic needs to be
    backhauled via telco facilities or fiber strung between feedpoints.
    The business model for BPL in rural areas is very questionable.
    Chances are if you don't have DSL or cable, you'll never see BPL.
    Wireless is actually much better suited for covering an area like
    you're describing and is much more scalable and proven.

    That's just it, no one will service those areas because it is not
    financially feasable to do so. No company is going to foot the bill
    for repeaters, equipment etc., needed to reach small customer bases.
    It just doesn't make sense financially. However it does make sense
    to target the more populated communities like Denver/Boulder areas.

In other words, BPL will probably crop up to compete in areas where 
telco DSL and cable are already established and where the money is.

Further notice how the Current Technologies spokesman in the article claims

    it doesn't make sense for BPL companies like Current Technologies to
    move forward with their business plans and financing if they're
    causing interference, because the FCC could immediately shut them
    down if they did ...

My personal opinion (and I am a HAM and member of the ARRL, so I am 
accordingly biased) is that the BPL industry is trying to get the FCC to 
change the radio interference rules to allow them to operate at the 
expense of the radio community. So far the FCC seems to be willing to do 
this in spite of over 5000 unfavorable comments on BPL and opposition 
from FEMA.

Of course, it could be that the FCC's opening the BPL issue for comment 
is to allow the BPL industry a chance to debate the issue before ruling 
against them.

But I doubt this very much. The FCC's willingness to screw over the very 
people they are supposed to protect in favor of business is certainly in 
line with the current atmosphere in Washington that allows business to 
write the rules at the expense of the consumer (witness the great 
success the RIAA has had). And, furthermore, the FCC has a long, long 
history of yielding to business demands: in the late 1940's they stalled 
deployment of FM radio in favor of AM under pressure from David Sarnoff 
of RCA and NBC because of the latter's large network of AM stations. So 
the precedent is there.

BOF