Dee Flint wrote:
"Jim Hampton" wrote in message
...

"Dee Flint" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
ups.com...
wrote:

[snip]

The article also accepts without question the idea that
fast internet access is a necessity for all Americans and their
communities - another Bush Administration bit
of rightthink.


Actually this would be more of a liberal idea.
It surprises me that a
Republican administration would buy into this.

Doesn't surprise me at all.

Thanks for posting the link. Anybody besides me and the
original poster actually listen to it?

Hello, Dee

Liberal? Pushing for more money for power companies? Please forgive my
ignorance, but if I follow the money trail, it leads to big
business (monopolies, at that).

Exactly.

Liberal because it is being pushed as every having a "right" to broadband.

I don't hear that in the article at all. What *is* mentioned is
the idea that the town needs it for their economy.

Yes follow the money and it leads to as many liberal business
men as it does conservative ones.

Sorry, Dee, I don't see that at all.

BPL is basically bad science and bad engineering,
pushed by the promise of being a quick "high-tech"
fix. Fits right in with the current administration's
attitude towards science and technology.

The pollution angle alone shows it to be a bad idea.

73 de Jim, N2EY

On Wed, 17 Aug 2005 18:28:56 -0400 Dee Flint wrote:
|
| wrote in message
| ups.com...
| wrote:
|
| [snip]
|
| The article also accepts without question the idea that
| fast internet access is a necessity for all Americans and their
| communities - another Bush Administration bit of rightthink.
|
|
| Actually this would be more of a liberal idea. It surprises me that a
| Republican administration would buy into this.

Bush has many friends who are energy company executives, board members,
and investors. He's doing his friends a favor by supporting their bad
ideas, even though in the long term, BPL is doomed to flop because it
simply cannot keep up with the coming fiber technology, or even match
what some DSL and cable/coaxial deployments are already doing.

BPL is a _waste_ of power company investment dollars, which will be
diverted away from crucially needed infrastructure updates to become
capable of handling new energy needs of the future, and to be secure
against terrorist attacks. BPL actually puts the nation at more risk
than it has now.

If power companies want to play "me too" in the information services
game, then what they should do is just trump everyone else by rolling
out fiber now in the right-of-ways they already have. They could kill
the rest of the market by deploying a gigabit fiber infrastructure.
Even Verizon's fiber offering wouldn't be close.

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Phil Howard KA9WGN | http://linuxhomepage.com/ http://ham.org/ |
| (first name) at ipal.net | http://phil.ipal.org/ http://ka9wgn.ham.org/ |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

.... I don't think that is anything more than a myth you are beginning,
perhaps you picked up that myth from some other place?

Fiber lines are owned by a specific entity, power lines can be leased for
such use by anyone... the costs are going to be very much different
between the two...

John

On Wed, 17 Aug 2005
23:59:08 +0000, phil-news-nospam wrote:

On Wed, 17 Aug 2005 18:28:56 -0400 Dee Flint wrote:
|
| wrote in message
| ups.com...
| wrote:
|
| [snip]
|
| The article also accepts without question the idea that
| fast internet access is a necessity for all Americans and their
| communities - another Bush Administration bit of rightthink.
|
|
| Actually this would be more of a liberal idea. It surprises me that a
| Republican administration would buy into this.

Bush has many friends who are energy company executives, board members,
and investors. He's doing his friends a favor by supporting their bad
ideas, even though in the long term, BPL is doomed to flop because it
simply cannot keep up with the coming fiber technology, or even match
what some DSL and cable/coaxial deployments are already doing.

BPL is a _waste_ of power company investment dollars, which will be
diverted away from crucially needed infrastructure updates to become
capable of handling new energy needs of the future, and to be secure
against terrorist attacks. BPL actually puts the nation at more risk
than it has now.

If power companies want to play "me too" in the information services
game, then what they should do is just trump everyone else by rolling
out fiber now in the right-of-ways they already have. They could kill
the rest of the market by deploying a gigabit fiber infrastructure.
Even Verizon's fiber offering wouldn't be close.

Dee Flint wrote:
wrote in message
ups.com...

wrote:


[snip]


The article also accepts without question the idea that
fast internet access is a necessity for all Americans and their
communities - another Bush Administration bit of rightthink.



Actually this would be more of a liberal idea. It surprises me that a
Republican administration would buy into this.

There is a lot of money to be made - even if it doesn't work very well.
Democrats have *not* cornered the market on bad ideas! 8^)

That is why I call it "faith based engineering". It *sounds* like a
great idea to use all those electrical lines to run the signals.

Reminds me of when I was a little kid, and though that we could fill
the cars gas tank by driving in reverse..... 8^)

- Mike KB3EIA -

On 17 Aug 2005 09:55:16 -0700 wrote:

| The "notching" solution is simple: Their BPL system does not use
| frequencies that are also ham bands. Whether it works or not is an open
| question.

What about MARS and SWL frequencies?


| - BPL is a "last mile" delivery method, not a complete system. Still
| needs a 'head end'

I've seen pictures of these units on primary (12 kV) lines, so by
"last mile" this must mean more than just the drop into the home.


| - BPL bandwidth is shared between users on the same line, so as your
| neighbors sign up and use the system, your performance degrades.

On what line? The primary (12 kV) or the secondary (120/240 V)?


| - There are other technologies (like Wi-Fi) which can do the same job
| without all the fuss and bother.

These are on 12cm and 5cm from what I have heard.


| - The big danger of BPL is that it turns the whole idea of spectrum
| protection and allocation upside-down, and sets a bad precedent.

It can also be susceptible to ham transmissions, which will unfairly blame
the ham radio operator as the cause of networking failures.

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Phil Howard KA9WGN | http://linuxhomepage.com/ http://ham.org/ |
| (first name) at ipal.net | http://phil.ipal.org/ http://ka9wgn.ham.org/ |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

wrote in message
...
On 17 Aug 2005 09:55:16 -0700 wrote:

| The "notching" solution is simple: Their BPL system does not use
| frequencies that are also ham bands. Whether it works or not is an open
| question.

What about MARS and SWL frequencies?


| - BPL is a "last mile" delivery method, not a complete system. Still
| needs a 'head end'

I've seen pictures of these units on primary (12 kV) lines, so by
"last mile" this must mean more than just the drop into the home.


| - BPL bandwidth is shared between users on the same line, so as your
| neighbors sign up and use the system, your performance degrades.

On what line? The primary (12 kV) or the secondary (120/240 V)?


| - There are other technologies (like Wi-Fi) which can do the same job
| without all the fuss and bother.

These are on 12cm and 5cm from what I have heard.


| - The big danger of BPL is that it turns the whole idea of spectrum
| protection and allocation upside-down, and sets a bad precedent.

It can also be susceptible to ham transmissions, which will unfairly blame
the ham radio operator as the cause of networking failures.

It will also be susceptible to interference from natural sources such as
lightning and other manmade sources such as occur with many electrical
devices. It would be quite easy to have a case where the computer power
supply, computer monitor, television, fluorescent lights, etc could cause a
degradation of the service.

Dee D. Flint, N8UZE

wrote:
On 17 Aug 2005 09:55:16 -0700 wrote:

| The "notching" solution is simple: Their BPL system does not use
| frequencies that are also ham bands. Whether it works or not is an open
| question.

What about MARS and SWL frequencies?

That's unclear. If covered, the result is more notch than coverage.

| - BPL is a "last mile" delivery method, not a complete system. Still
| needs a 'head end'

I've seen pictures of these units on primary (12 kV) lines, so by
"last mile" this must mean more than just the drop into the home.

What is typically done is that fiber or other highcapacity
communications is brought to a point (the injector) near a bunch of
customers. Then the signals are converted to the frequencies used by
the BPL system and put on the medium-voltage distribution line. (Note
that a distribution line and a transmission line are not the same thing
to powerco people).

At each stepdown (service) transformer, there's a coupler to take the
signals around it, because such transformers are very lossy at BPL
frequencies. They're
intentionally designed that way to keep noise and surges off the
service drops.

Which means that the couplers will bring HF noise and such into
customer's houses.

The distance from the injector to the customers served is typically
measured in hundreds or thousands of feet, not miles. The MV
distribution lines are not used forlong- or even medium-distance BPL
transmission - too lossy.

| - BPL bandwidth is shared between users on the same line, so as your
| neighbors sign up and use the system, your performance degrades.

On what line? The primary (12 kV) or the secondary (120/240 V)?

Both. Let's say you have an injector site that feeds a few thousand
feet of MV line, and there are a dozen or so transformers on that
line, each with its own coupler, and customers.

The available bandwidth is shared by all the customers on that
injector.
If there's (say) 5 mbd available from that injector and only one
customer
is active, s/he gets all 5 mbd - 100 times the speed of dialup! But if
there are 20 customers active, they all have to share, and may get only
250 kbd each. Which is only 5x the speed of dialup!

(Numbers are only for the purpose of illustration)

It's like the situation experienced by people with a DSL or cable modem
connection and multiple computers in the house all online at the same
time,
except that you have to share with the whole neighborhood, not just
Junior
upstairs gaming.

| - There are other technologies (like Wi-Fi) which can do the same job
| without all the fuss and bother.

These are on 12cm and 5cm from what I have heard.

Yup.

| - The big danger of BPL is that it turns the whole idea of spectrum
| protection and allocation upside-down, and sets a bad precedent.

It can also be susceptible to ham transmissions, which will unfairly blame
the ham radio operator as the cause of networking failures.

Once word of that gets around, hams may be blamed even if they're *not*
the cause!

Ultimately the rise and fall of BPL will depend on whether it can
compete
in the marketplace with DSL, cable, and other methods. Hopefully it
cannot.

While hams, ARRL, IEEE and others were not able to completely stop BPL,
neither were BPL proponents able to get the rules changes they wanted,
either. And actions by groups like ARRL spread the word of the BPL
threat early on, rather than waiting until the systems gained a
foothold.

There have been several instances where test BPL systems were shut down
as being impractical. Some municipalities that were looking at BPL
eventually said "No thanks" due to the issues raised.

Meanwhile, the competing broadband solutions become more available
and more affordable.

73 de Jim, N2EY

In article . com,
wrote:

The "notching" solution is simple: Their BPL system does not use
frequencies that are also ham bands. Whether it works or not is an open
question.

But how long will that last? Here in Israel we call it the "boiled lobster"
effect. A live lobster placed in a pot of cold water is happy. As the
water gets hotter it falls asleep. It never realizes it's being cooked.

This what will happen with BPL. By the time you realize that it's taken
over the ham bands, it will be too late. That's why I'm boycotting
Google, they with two other companies invested $100,000,000 in BPL.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (077)-424-1667 IL Fax: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838
Support the growing boycott of Google by radio users and hobbyists.
It's starting to work, Yahoo has surpassed Google.

A good source of information about BPL is Anthony Good's FAQ website
at:

http://www.qrpis.org/~k3ng/bpl.html

Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
In article . com,
wrote:

The "notching" solution is simple: Their BPL system does not use
frequencies that are also ham bands. Whether it works or not is an open
question.

But how long will that last?

Exactly.

Here in Israel we call it the "boiled lobster"
effect. A live lobster placed in a pot of cold water is happy. As the
water gets hotter it falls asleep. It never realizes it's being cooked.

There's a similar story on this side of the pond about a frog. Says
that
if you put a frog into hot water it will jump out, but if you put one
in
cool water and warm it up slowly, it will not.

Except that's not what happens at all - real frogs jump out when the
water gets hot enough.

www.snopes.com

This what will happen with BPL. By the time you realize that it's taken
over the ham bands, it will be too late.

The ARRL and others have made a lot of noise about BPL, and they're not
letting up.

That's why I'm boycotting
Google, they with two other companies invested $100,000,000 in BPL.

Does boycotting Google help? I don't pay them any money.

73 de Jim, N2EY

Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (077)-424-1667 IL Fax: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838
Support the growing boycott of Google by radio users and hobbyists.
It's starting to work, Yahoo has surpassed Google.