"running dogg" wrote in message
...


I believe that the original idea was to provide internet to areas not
serviced by phone and cable lines.

Remote access was sure part of the original BPL hype, if not the original
idea. It seems to me radiation losses and susceptibility to interference
would go up with distance so I'm wondering if a home which is too far out
for DSL would remain a good candidate for BPL.



The thing is, most of the western
world is serviced by phone, cable, cell phone, or satellite (the
internet can be had via satellite) so there really is no need for BPL.

I doubt if there was ever any need for BPL. We've been stringing wire in
the US since the Samuel Morse days, and we're good at it. Running some coax
along the same poles which carry the power could be done, if the consumers
want to pay for it. Those are the restrictions the cable TV industry has to
deal with, and they seem to be doing OK. Small rural towns were the first
parts of the US to be cabled up in order to get big city TV from a master
antenna.


And the areas that aren't (Africa, Middle East, poorer parts of Asia)
have people too poor to afford computers, although there has been some
success with aid agencies giving a village chieftain a PC and a
satellite dish so his people can access the internet. So BPL simply has
no place except for power grid management, and it's not too successful
there either.




Well, let's not forget vending machines. I remember predictions from the
early days of the internet which held that most vending machines would soon
be connected so the operators would be able to monitor and supply their
machines more efficently. Surprisingly, most operators seem to be too damn
cheap to put their machines on dial up and are still doing business the old
fashioned way. Maybe BPL will finally herald the new dawn in vending
machine efficiency.

I don't know if BPL is better for power grid managment than whatever power
companies are using now. The more local idea of turning power on and off
for individual apartments and homes from a central location seems to be a
bit of a stretch, at least in the short run. A utility would have the task
of replacing maybe hundreds of thousands of manual power controls with
remote control BPL switches. Cutting and establishing the power manually,
as needed, sure seems like a better use of the company's labor and capital.
And, the utility would have big PR problems if more than a small few of
those fancy BPL relays fail after a lightning storm.

I'd like to know just why IBM thinks BPL might be a winner after all the
recent failures.

Frank Dresser