First broadband over power lines working spec released
By Nilay Patel 
posted August 1st 2009 8:20AM
posted August 1st 2009 8:20AM
It's been a long slow go for broadband over power lines, but it looks like things are finally picking up steam -- an IEEE working group has completed main development of the standard and released the first draft of technical specs. Of course, there's still the arduous finalization process to go through, but now that BPL is an actual functioning standard we're hoping to see a new class of 100Mbps internet providers pop up and bring some much-needed competition to cable and DSL.
Good for them, although I don't know much about this.
Would it be more pricey than current solutions?
Considering it would go through your already existing power lines, it would be a lot cheaper.
Has this solved the problem which plagues the adapters for home networks over power lines, which sees your circuitry become an antenna and therefore a massive, high powered wifi transmitter?
Great. Now begins the horrible interference to amateur radio operators nationwide...
Agreed.
The ham operators I know are going to be pissed.
Damn right we are.
Who?
The needs of the many... yada yada yada, you know the rest.
wow this would be l33t- I'd take a cheap 100mbps connection any day over my cheap 2mbps connection, provided it's uncapped and unthrottled and without any of them crazy anti-piracy agreements
Oh of course you would. I would if the ISP also provided a pirate media repository for the pillaging and paid me to use their lowly 100mbit connection.
/sarcasam
You won't ever see 100Mb/s broadband, remember this is for LAN use as well. Broadband deployments will be a very small fraction of that speed.
You won't ever see 100mb/s broadband, unless you live in Europe and this was the year 2000.
Now you'll see 100mb/s broadband, TV and landline for 30 euros a month.
gosh I'm so excited I would start screaming. IEEE!!!!!!!!!!!
I've always read/heard that for urban and suburban customers, it won't be a technology that's neck and neck with Cable, but for extreme rural conditions it'd open up many people who can only get that horrid latency satellite internet right now to something more responsive.
I don't care as long as it gives me an alternative to Time Warner.
i dont care as long as i dont have to pay anything to comcast
i think time warner, comcast, and any other isp wanna cap and charge per gibabyte = owned
Time Warner doesn't cap, they said the were gonna do that in test markets but the pulled at after they saw how people got pissed about it (me included).
Correction: "they were gonna do that in test markets but they pulled out"
Edit button please?
Really good idea, especially for developing countries that have electricity supplies but don't have phone/wireless networks in place. providing it's cheap and easy to set up, plug and play literally!
Would it be faster than getting the internet via phone line?
It said in the story 100Mbit internet provider. But it doesn't say how much will be available to each customer. Maybe it means 100Mbit per client which would be about 1000x faster than your phone modem.
Good bye HF radio. The Amateur Radio Relay League has been fighting this for years - it's going to add stupid amounts of HF radio interference to an already noisy spectrum. That may not be meaningful to those of you who spend all their time pushing packets down wires, but there are still a lot of people who actually use the 1-30Mhz radio spectrum (including ships at sea).
You know I was a ham and a member of the ARRL and I say too bad, times change, move on. a much much great good to be served.
How about all those cities that have exclusive agreements with cable companies will they block that service too? I'm living in a city where Comcast is the only cable provider available. Comcast pays hundreds of thousand dollars for this privilege to the city and in return we pay higher fees than neighboring cities for the same service.
No. Here in Cincinnati, we're a Time Warner only cable city...I had BPL (the company's name was Current) for over two years. Service was really stable. I think other than power outages (which obviously no net then), I had maybe a half dozen times where service died. They're pretty reliable in my opinion.
Really, never understood how those cable monopolies have never been looked into.
Cable companies arent looked into as a monopoly because they really arent one. The dont overlap each other as a professional courtesy, they could if those chose to in most locations. Plus the alternatives of directv and dish network.
AFAIK this STILL isn't a viable alternative to even dialup. Although the transfer speeds through the wire may be extreme, they only work one way (download). You have to send the ISP a command that tells it what to send through the fast wire. Depending on location, that could be the hamper on any blazing speeds you all have in mind. Maybe for getting emai or watching TV, but not for anything thats latency dependent like games, voip, etc.
Nope.
http://www.current.net/ServiceAndPricing/Residential/PricingAndBenefits/
We've gotten our Internet service via BPL (thru Current Communications) since 2004 or 2005 here in the part of Cincinnati I live in. It's pretty sweet.
I've been using this near Moscow for a yeah sometime ago. I could play Quake 3 just fine.
It's not a new technology, just a standard.
It will be nice to see some competition for Comcast and Verizon.
Let's hope they don't take as long as they did with 802.11n.
The one thing that I loved when I had BPL was the equal up/down speed. I had 512kb down and 512kb up. And it was $20. Right now the company here's max is 3mb, yet I can get 5mb from DSL for the same price. Although 3mb up would be interesting. :P
I think the catch is here:
IF there is a black out... The internet goes down with it!
who the hell will use internet if its blackout.
@lianne777 - UPS or a generator.
How does your cable / DSL modem work in a blackout?
Dude, In India, Blackouts are restricted to only one location. Not the whole city or something of that order.
BPL works better when there is no power !, less interference.
My ISP is currently wiring the whole city for fiber. While I'd get that over BPL, it would help in rural areas.
Hams need to stand up to fcc and say NO BPL!
73's (swl) short wave listener
I bet all 4 of them will show up in the protest.
Gee.. This is like a zombie... Keep killing it and it keeps coming back... Its a bad concept that does not work... Been tried around the world and failed...
It takes more stuff to make this work than DSL! They lie like a cheep rug about how it will bring broadband to the rural areas... Cheaper to do DSL and the necessary repeaters than this joke!
Not surprised the IEEE would work up a standard for this joke... How many standards does this make for this failure now...
Since you are an expert on transmission line characteristics and keep abreast of the latest developments in multifrequency transmissions over wire, I believe you.
So any comments on the dozens of commercial implementations or the thousands of satisfied customers? No? Didn't think so. Stop complaining about alternatives.
I've got cox high speed Internet and it gives me 35 megs a second. 100 would be awesome only if was cheaper
I have COX, I had the top speed for a while and it was a scam so I went to the middle. Premier to preffered. They are both junky and way over priced, This will get my $ as soon as it is available, Great go suck COX you are as bad as Comcast.
one thing i would change right away its the logo... its so boring...
That's the IEEE logo...