"Dee D. Flint" wrote in message y.com...
"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.

It's worse than that Dee.

Power lines used for BPL will have very significant losses per block
or however you might measure it and there is a distinct limit to the
number of amplifiers which can be used per injection point. Bottom
line is that BPL won't work unless it's periodically and frequently
fed by a fiber optic or cable TV type "primary source", a backbone.
The BPL system currently being installed in Manassas VA will make use
of a municipally-funded fiber optic backbone.

The simple fact of the matter is that BPL will not happen in the
boonies unless it's fed into the boonies on some sort of backbone. So
if Farmer Jones doesn't already have cable TV, DSL/ISDN or fiber optic
service available the probability of Jones getting a BPL feed is nil.
The FCC commissioners who are hyping BPL are either stupid beyond
belief or are lying thru their teeth.

Dee D. Flint, N8UZE

w3rv