"Jim Hampton" wrote in message
...
Dave,

What amazes me is that this *one* interest (the power companies with BPL)
may well be allowed to wreck havoc with many (far more than just amateur,
which is what some folks think) users. I'm not even sure how
inexpensively
BPL could be rolled out in a rural area. They would either need some kind
of boosters or run a *lot* of rf power at the source. Maybe I'm wrong,
but
my thinking is that BPL would likely be targeted at suburbs where many
might
live too far away for DSL, but the distribution costs for BPL might not be
too much.

The marketing hype is cheap broadband for the rural areas. Economic reality
is that it will probably never be extended into the rural areas even if some
suburban areas do go for it. Every single transformer between the injection
point of the signal and the end user must be bypassed with the BPL signal
for that signal to work. If you only have one user every few miles, it will
never pay off. And of course you've mentioned the power and/or signal
boosters required. Periodic boosters all along the line will be needed.

Dee D. Flint, N8UZE