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#21
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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, $50.00 per month is not as cheap as you can get cable or DSL (at least in some areas), but it is doable and I doubt too many ISPs are going to try high speed service where, even if they could subscribe everyone, the average population density is 10 per square mile or less I suspect that BPL will go the same route; they'll try, perhaps, but it will be in the cities and suburbs where they can make money (and they will have competition *and* cause a lot of qrm). The low population density areas will *still* not be served (except by satellite or, perhaps, dial-up). As for president, I *still* like Ike!!! 73 from Rochester, NY Jim AA2QA --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.669 / Virus Database: 431 - Release Date: 4/26/04 |
#22
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Jim Hampton wrote:
... stuff deleted ... I suspect that BPL will go the same route; they'll try, perhaps, but it will be in the cities and suburbs where they can make money (and they will have competition *and* cause a lot of qrm). The low population density areas will *still* not be served (except by satellite or, perhaps, dial-up). I agree with this, except that a satellite link has too much latency to support VPN, so some of us rural folk are still stuck with only dialup (and I$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
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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 |
#24
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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
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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
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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
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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 |
#28
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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
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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 |
#30
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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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