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  #21   Report Post  
Old April 27th 04, 10:32 PM
Jim Hampton
 
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"KØHB" wrote in message
link.net...

"Jack Twilley" wrote


The idea of buried fiber along every two-lane road in the

country may
be a fantasy, but laying cable along every Interstate is

certainly
doable with the resources available. Of course, who will run

this
true "information superhighway" is the next debate...


Ten-twelve years ago I was up in northern Minnesota deer hunting.
Got up to my stand way back down a township road, 5 miles from
the nearest dwelling, at zero-dark-thirty and waited for Bambi's
dad to show up with the sunrise. Just in time for morning colors
(0800) I start hearing this awful racket off in the distance,
like a farmer might be buring drainage tiles or something, except
this part of Minnesota hasn't seen an agricultural plow since the
depression. Finally got curious (and cold) enough to go
investigate. Here, out in the middle of absolute nowhere, is a
contract crew burying a 144-fiber cable big as your wrist, and
another spare alonside of it. Every half-mile they put in an
above-ground service loop, and the next day another crew came
behind and plonked down a splice-and-access pedestal at each loop
waiting for the subscribers to show up. The pedestals are still
there, some kinda shot up, but no customers on the horizon. I
bet the local Podunk Power Cooperative is getting ready to roll
out BPL in the same manner!

73, de Hans, K0HB


Hello, Hans

My gut feeling is that if someone is out in the boonies and they *really*
want high speed internet, they could go for satellite and have a decent
system. Yes, $50.00 per month is not as cheap as you can get cable or DSL
(at least in some areas), but it is doable and I doubt too many ISPs are
going to try high speed service where, even if they could subscribe
everyone, the average population density is 10 per square mile or less

I suspect that BPL will go the same route; they'll try, perhaps, but it will
be in the cities and suburbs where they can make money (and they will have
competition *and* cause a lot of qrm). The low population density areas
will *still* not be served (except by satellite or, perhaps, dial-up).

As for president, I *still* like Ike!!!

73 from Rochester, NY
Jim AA2QA



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  #22   Report Post  
Old April 28th 04, 12:39 AM
aa6lk
 
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Jim Hampton wrote:
... stuff deleted ...
I suspect that BPL will go the same route; they'll try, perhaps, but it will
be in the cities and suburbs where they can make money (and they will have
competition *and* cause a lot of qrm). The low population density areas
will *still* not be served (except by satellite or, perhaps, dial-up).


I agree with this, except that a satellite link has too much latency to
support
VPN, so some of us rural folk are still stuck with only dialup (and
I$DN). There
is an outfit in town that's putting up terrestrial microwave links in
the area,
but they claim the County is stalling on the approval for the tower they
need
to service my area. Grrrr!

I give BPL little chance of success in my neighborhood - the PG&E lines
around here
generate so much hash that it would never fly. Had PG&E come out once
to look at
it aan it went away for awhile, but now that the hot weather's back so's
the noise.

73 from Rochester, NY
Jim AA2QA


73,
L
  #23   Report Post  
Old April 28th 04, 12:39 AM
aa6lk
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Jim Hampton wrote:
... stuff deleted ...
I suspect that BPL will go the same route; they'll try, perhaps, but it will
be in the cities and suburbs where they can make money (and they will have
competition *and* cause a lot of qrm). The low population density areas
will *still* not be served (except by satellite or, perhaps, dial-up).


I agree with this, except that a satellite link has too much latency to
support
VPN, so some of us rural folk are still stuck with only dialup (and
I$DN). There
is an outfit in town that's putting up terrestrial microwave links in
the area,
but they claim the County is stalling on the approval for the tower they
need
to service my area. Grrrr!

I give BPL little chance of success in my neighborhood - the PG&E lines
around here
generate so much hash that it would never fly. Had PG&E come out once
to look at
it aan it went away for awhile, but now that the hot weather's back so's
the noise.

73 from Rochester, NY
Jim AA2QA


73,
L
  #24   Report Post  
Old April 28th 04, 04:30 AM
Wes Stewart
 
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On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 12:37:23 -0400, Minnie Bannister
wrote:

|Yes, the technical standards need to be changed to allow BPL: require
|all power lines to be shielded.

The ones under ground and under water already are.

The problem will be when every house in your neighborhood is a big
#&%*(*& radiator. Or even worse when your KW wipes out the entire
Internet service in a few square miles.

I'm a rural customer of an electric cooperative. (I happen to use
them for my dialup ISP also)

A couple of years ago when I was having a bout of power line
interference I happened to talk to their VP for new technology,
engineer to engineer.

Among other things he told me that reading meters was a big expense
since their service area is huge, covering good parts of three
counties, one of which is the size of Connecticut. They (we, I'm a
part owner) have 29,000 customers and 2,400 miles of lines.

So they (we) tried a system of reading the meters remotely, using
(very) slow-speed data on the power lines. They couldn't even solve
the technical challenges of doing this and wound up changing out most
of the meters to ones with built in transmitters that can be
interrogated by a guy driving around in a pickup truck.

If they can't read my meter remotely how in the hell are they going to
supply me with high-speed data transmission? BTW, I've strongly
suggested that they don't try.

  #25   Report Post  
Old April 28th 04, 04:30 AM
Wes Stewart
 
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On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 12:37:23 -0400, Minnie Bannister
wrote:

|Yes, the technical standards need to be changed to allow BPL: require
|all power lines to be shielded.

The ones under ground and under water already are.

The problem will be when every house in your neighborhood is a big
#&%*(*& radiator. Or even worse when your KW wipes out the entire
Internet service in a few square miles.

I'm a rural customer of an electric cooperative. (I happen to use
them for my dialup ISP also)

A couple of years ago when I was having a bout of power line
interference I happened to talk to their VP for new technology,
engineer to engineer.

Among other things he told me that reading meters was a big expense
since their service area is huge, covering good parts of three
counties, one of which is the size of Connecticut. They (we, I'm a
part owner) have 29,000 customers and 2,400 miles of lines.

So they (we) tried a system of reading the meters remotely, using
(very) slow-speed data on the power lines. They couldn't even solve
the technical challenges of doing this and wound up changing out most
of the meters to ones with built in transmitters that can be
interrogated by a guy driving around in a pickup truck.

If they can't read my meter remotely how in the hell are they going to
supply me with high-speed data transmission? BTW, I've strongly
suggested that they don't try.



  #26   Report Post  
Old April 28th 04, 06:17 AM
Doug Smith W9WI
 
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Wes Stewart wrote:
If they can't read my meter remotely how in the hell are they going to
supply me with high-speed data transmission? BTW, I've strongly
suggested that they don't try.


I've done the same with our cooperative here.

Personally, I think attempts to fight BPL through the political system
are a waste of time. The amateur radio community doesn't have the
financial resources to outbid the utilities for legislation.

What *will* stop BPL is economics.

Many of the expenses of offering broadband communications are
independent of transmission technology. Obtaining a backbone
connection, providing mail & web servers, customer support & billing are
all expenses that are the same whether you're providing BPL, DSL, or
cable modem service.

BPL has the additional disadvantage of requiring well-trained personnel
with expensive safety gear to maintain the infrastructure. Most cable
and DSL maintenance can be done on the ground.

BPL is at an advantage ONLY in very rural places, too small for cable
and too far from the CO for DSL. Such places don't have enough
customers to pay for the fixed infrastructure.

IMHO a few utilities will try full-scale rollouts of BPL - and will find
it doesn't sell enough to pay the expenses. It'll go the way of the
picturephone.

=============

If that doesn't work, we can tell the freeband community what's wiping
out 26-29MHz, and post a few photos of the BPL access equipment, and
then be sure to not get anywhere near a power pole without a bulletproof
vestgrin...

--
Doug Smith W9WI
Pleasant View (Nashville), TN EM66
http://www.w9wi.com

  #27   Report Post  
Old April 28th 04, 06:17 AM
Doug Smith W9WI
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Wes Stewart wrote:
If they can't read my meter remotely how in the hell are they going to
supply me with high-speed data transmission? BTW, I've strongly
suggested that they don't try.


I've done the same with our cooperative here.

Personally, I think attempts to fight BPL through the political system
are a waste of time. The amateur radio community doesn't have the
financial resources to outbid the utilities for legislation.

What *will* stop BPL is economics.

Many of the expenses of offering broadband communications are
independent of transmission technology. Obtaining a backbone
connection, providing mail & web servers, customer support & billing are
all expenses that are the same whether you're providing BPL, DSL, or
cable modem service.

BPL has the additional disadvantage of requiring well-trained personnel
with expensive safety gear to maintain the infrastructure. Most cable
and DSL maintenance can be done on the ground.

BPL is at an advantage ONLY in very rural places, too small for cable
and too far from the CO for DSL. Such places don't have enough
customers to pay for the fixed infrastructure.

IMHO a few utilities will try full-scale rollouts of BPL - and will find
it doesn't sell enough to pay the expenses. It'll go the way of the
picturephone.

=============

If that doesn't work, we can tell the freeband community what's wiping
out 26-29MHz, and post a few photos of the BPL access equipment, and
then be sure to not get anywhere near a power pole without a bulletproof
vestgrin...

--
Doug Smith W9WI
Pleasant View (Nashville), TN EM66
http://www.w9wi.com

  #28   Report Post  
Old April 28th 04, 02:08 PM
L. M. Rappaport
 
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On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 21:32:30 GMT, "Jim Hampton"
wrote (with possible editing):

....snip


My gut feeling is that if someone is out in the boonies and they *really*
want high speed internet, they could go for satellite and have a decent
system. Yes, $50.00 per month is not as cheap as you can get cable or DSL
(at least in some areas), but it is doable and I doubt too many ISPs are
going to try high speed service where, even if they could subscribe
everyone, the average population density is 10 per square mile or less


FWIW, I'm actively involved with developing broadband in the three
northern counties of New Hampshire. In addition, I run a small (7
engineer) computer consulting firm - we write software for mostly
European clients. We've used satellite since before it was available
from the normal providers, and in a word, it stinks. Latency is
awful. When we ran private links over Intelsat, we had reasonable up
and download rates, but the pricing was incredible - $12,000 per
month. When we used Starband (two-way satellite), the uplink speed
was atrocious (at 19k), and, again, latency has always been a major
problem.

We now have dsl and here we use sdsl. It's available from two
carriers, NCIA and Verizon. We think the pricing is quite high.

For this part of the State, we are considering a combination of both
fiber and radio. Third Rail, Terrabeam, and Motorola all offer fairly
reasonable prices on broadband radio systems, all the way up to
several gbps. Fiber is a natural on high voltage transmission towers
as it isn't affected by electrical transients and it isn't a conductor
to start with. We've obtained some funding so far for some
feasibility, marketing and engineering studies and are now looking for
money for a demonstration project.

To put things into perspective, realize that in Korea "broadband"
means 26 meg at less than $50/month, in Japan it's 20 meg at the same
price. Our goal is 100 meg at less than $50/month and that's in a
mostly rural area.
--

73,
Larry W1HJF


I suspect that BPL will go the same route; they'll try, perhaps, but it will
be in the cities and suburbs where they can make money (and they will have
competition *and* cause a lot of qrm). The low population density areas
will *still* not be served (except by satellite or, perhaps, dial-up).

As for president, I *still* like Ike!!!

73 from Rochester, NY
Jim AA2QA



---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (
http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.669 / Virus Database: 431 - Release Date: 4/26/04


  #29   Report Post  
Old April 28th 04, 02:08 PM
L. M. Rappaport
 
Posts: n/a
Default

On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 21:32:30 GMT, "Jim Hampton"
wrote (with possible editing):

....snip


My gut feeling is that if someone is out in the boonies and they *really*
want high speed internet, they could go for satellite and have a decent
system. Yes, $50.00 per month is not as cheap as you can get cable or DSL
(at least in some areas), but it is doable and I doubt too many ISPs are
going to try high speed service where, even if they could subscribe
everyone, the average population density is 10 per square mile or less


FWIW, I'm actively involved with developing broadband in the three
northern counties of New Hampshire. In addition, I run a small (7
engineer) computer consulting firm - we write software for mostly
European clients. We've used satellite since before it was available
from the normal providers, and in a word, it stinks. Latency is
awful. When we ran private links over Intelsat, we had reasonable up
and download rates, but the pricing was incredible - $12,000 per
month. When we used Starband (two-way satellite), the uplink speed
was atrocious (at 19k), and, again, latency has always been a major
problem.

We now have dsl and here we use sdsl. It's available from two
carriers, NCIA and Verizon. We think the pricing is quite high.

For this part of the State, we are considering a combination of both
fiber and radio. Third Rail, Terrabeam, and Motorola all offer fairly
reasonable prices on broadband radio systems, all the way up to
several gbps. Fiber is a natural on high voltage transmission towers
as it isn't affected by electrical transients and it isn't a conductor
to start with. We've obtained some funding so far for some
feasibility, marketing and engineering studies and are now looking for
money for a demonstration project.

To put things into perspective, realize that in Korea "broadband"
means 26 meg at less than $50/month, in Japan it's 20 meg at the same
price. Our goal is 100 meg at less than $50/month and that's in a
mostly rural area.
--

73,
Larry W1HJF


I suspect that BPL will go the same route; they'll try, perhaps, but it will
be in the cities and suburbs where they can make money (and they will have
competition *and* cause a lot of qrm). The low population density areas
will *still* not be served (except by satellite or, perhaps, dial-up).

As for president, I *still* like Ike!!!

73 from Rochester, NY
Jim AA2QA



---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (
http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.669 / Virus Database: 431 - Release Date: 4/26/04


  #30   Report Post  
Old April 28th 04, 03:50 PM
KØHB
 
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"KØHB" wrote

While GWB calls for relaxing Part 15.....

There needs to be technical standards to make
possible new broadband technologies, such as the use of
high-speed communication directly over power lines. Power lines
were for electricity; power lines can be used for broadband
technology. So the technical standards need to be changed to
encourage that.


.....the NTIAyesterday (4/27/2004) released a paper which argues
AGAINST relaxing Part 15 (see below). Full NTIA report at
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/fcc...bpl/index.html


"Critical review of the assumptions underlying these analyses
revealed that application of existing Part 15 compliance
measurement procedures for BPL systems results in a significant
underestimation of peak field strength. Underestimation of the
actual peak field strength is the leading contributor to high
interference risks. As applied in current practice to BPL
systems, Part 15 measurement guidelines do not address unique
physical and electromagnetic characteristics of BPL radiated
emissions. Refining compliance measurement procedures for BPL
systems will not impede implementation of BPL technology because
BPL networks reportedly can be successfully implemented under
existing field strength limits.

"Accordingly, NTIA does NOT recommend that the FCC relax Part 15
field strength limits for BPL systems. Further based on studies
to date, NTIA recommends several "access" BPL compliance
measurement provisions that derive from existing Part 15
measurement guidelines. Among these are requirements to: use
measurement antenna heights near the height of power lines;
measure at a uniform distance of ten (10) meters from the BPL
device and power lines; and measure using a calibrated rod
antenna or a loop antenna in connection with appropriate factors
relating magnetic and electric field strength levels at
frequencies below 30 MHz."

Sunuvagun,

de Hans, K0HB



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