.... 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.

"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.

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

73 de Jim, N2EY


Dee D. Flint, N8UZE



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).


73 from Rochester, NY
Jim AA2QA


Liberal because it is being pushed as every having a "right" to broadband.
Yes follow the money and it leads to as many liberal business men as it does
conservative ones.

Dee D. Flint, N8UZE

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

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

From: "Jim Hampton" on Wed, Aug 17 2005 4:29 pm

wrote in message
Jim Hampton wrote:
wrote in message


Power lines were never meant to carry HF communication signals.

No kidding?!? From whom did you pick up that factoid? :-)

They're lossy at HF because they radiate! The whole concept
is deeply flawed. By allowing BPL systems, FCC is setting
a very bad precedent by saying it's OK to pollute the electro
magnetic spectrum with noise, even if there are viable
alternatives to the noise-producing technology.

A couple of points he First, the FCC does NOT "allow"
Access BPL existance. Access BPL systems are (note
carefully) UNINTENTIONAL Radiators.

Secondly, the FCC has never ever established any "radio
service" about or for any Broadband Over Power Lines
concept. BPL is a WIRED system; i.e., NOT an intentional
radiator of RF.

Thirdly, the FCC DOES CONTROL RADIATED RF LEVELS AND TO
ESTABLISHED SPECIFICATIONS NOW IN TITLE 47 C.F.R. That
radiation level HAS been quantified and put into an Order
that did appear both in the Federal Register and at the
FCC website under the Office of Engineering Technology
link. It wasn't under the Wireless Telecommunications
Bureau page nor the Amateur radio page under that (there
hasn't been any new link on the amateur page there since
2002).

The NOI (Notice Of Inquiry) of the FCC that caused this
recent flap and furor was NOT about the existance of BPL
as any service...IT WAS ABOUT MEASUREMENT METHODS TO
DETERMINE ACCEPTIBLE WAYS TO MEASURE THE RADIATION.

The OET knew damn well that BPL would radiate. But, they
could NOT LEGALLY STOP BPL from existing. All they could
do is establish a legally-acceptible MEANS OF MEASURING
THAT EXPECTED RADIATION.


Well, by limited interference, I am suggesting that BPL be limited as any
other unintentional radiator.

It IS. One has to scrounge around the FCC webiste a bit to
find it, but it IS there.

I do hear your point and it is well taken.
We do *not* need "only" a 10 dB increase in noise in general LOL

Nobody does, but it has happened. Listen to the "ISM" bands
and the DSSS and stuff there does raise the noise floor.
However, the occupancy of those ISM bands is nearly ALL that
mode and those users coexist peacefully.


Also, as we are well aware, no filter is perfect, whether a notch filter or
a bandpass filter or any other filter. Also, filters introduce distortion
into the signal.

Irrelevant. Those "notch filters" can't erase MOST of the
frequencies on HF. The "licensed users" and the UNLICENSED
listeners are spread over most of the HF spectrum.

So, it remains to be seen if the power companies can come
up with a BPL with very limited impact on licensed services. I do have my
doubts, but am only suggesting that *if* they can prove a system can produce
very low noise in the airwaves, then it might be worth a try. That is a
*big* if.

Many, many things ARE possible. The last 109 years of the total
existance of radio have shown that.

However, TRANSMISSION LINES of signals are technology that goes
back BEFORE the "birth" of radio in 1896. Lee de Forrest, the
inventor of the three-element vacuum tube, was studying
transmission lines academically before his "audion" experiments.
As far as our present-day technology knows (and that is
considerable), transmission lines with lots of discontinuities
will radiate; the TEM field won't be nicely contained. Given
that the ordinary 60 Hz power distribution lines are chock full
of discontinuities and changes in conductor size and spacing
(thus a change in characteristic impedance where that step is a
discontinuity), those power transmission lines WILL RADIATE RF.
That is inevitable.

IF and ONLY IF the electric power distribution system was
designed and REBUILT to known transmission line standards at
HF-VHF could such a wired BPL system be tried out for minimum
interference.

was not

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

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

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

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

It was on Morning Edition because we heard it when we were driving
my wife to work.

It made me (a knowlegeable ham and engineer) and my wife (a non-ham
but technically educated) sick.

--
73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

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 -