Broadband Internet from you electrical outlet?

[Prison Kids]

I heard that the power companies are close to unleashing broadband through the electrical outlets in any room of your home. The news featured a story on this and showed a small modem that plugs into any outlet and will desipher broadband signals to be used for your PC, with outragous speeds, due to the size of the wiring used to carry electricity. They stated the only obstcle they faced, was manuvering around the power stations, but that they had resolved that issue, and ready to release this to the public soon.

That would be pretty cool to have hard wired internet access w/o having to wire you home.

Anyone heard of this. I could only find this article:

http://www.cio.com/archive/041503/et_development.html

[Urban_Squrill]

Nice

[Siliconjunkie]

BAD BAD BAD!

BPL causes MAJOR interference on amatuer radio bands. It does not bring broadband to any new areas.

Please realize the impact this has on others hobbies and do not support BPL.

Citing the potential for interference to and from Amateur Radio, the ARRL has called on the FCC to "take no steps" to permit Broadband over Power Line (BPL)--a form of power line carrier (PLC) technology. The League has filed a 120-page response--including studies--in response to the FCC's BPL Notice of Inquiry (NOI) in ET Docket 03-104, published May 23. The NOI asking how the FCC should regulate the delivery of broadband services to homes and businesses using electrical wiring to conduct high-speed digital signals attracted some 1900 comments--many from the amateur community--by the July 7 comment deadline.

http://www.arrl.org/news/bandthreat/

http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/

[Kc2iLq]

No good can possibly come of this.


-Kc2iLq

[Siliconjunkie]

Nope, it brings no value to the table. It does not reach any further than existing technologies and only serves to line the pockets of the power companies.

[Prison Kids]

After wiring my last two homes with cat5 it sounded nice...

I am now wireless and happy.

However, it would be a nice feature if one could somehow use the existing outlets if only to network a home or business. I have never heard anything on this however.

[Starfury_2260]

it would be nice if they would get some broadband access out to the rural areas. and satellite doesn't count, as it's way too expensive and not any better than dialup on lag time, plus upload speeds on 1way access.

[Bovon]

I have been a ham radio operator for about 45 years. In that time, I have seen similar technologies come and go..usually affecting the Amateur Radio Service. ARS as it is known, provides emergency communications in every instance of disaster..if the service is further hindered, there will be less qualified radio operators when they are needed.

The power lines will induct all other radio signals in the ether (air ways). This will cause severe problems for the ARS as well as broad band users...but the Hams will get the dirty end of the stick (as always). Radio waves are everywhere, and any conductors anywhere around will absorb some of these waves. Hams plus other communications will be affected..but the Hams the most because our longwire antennas are many times parallel to the power lines, and the energy absorption will be great...the FCC will shut the ham station down due to the interference.

I have seen it done..especially in the early years of home TV and outside antennas.

[bailey]

internet service to the rual areas that have line of sight is very popular in some areas with microwave wireless cable tv systems, is as good as it can get, I wou;d like to see more of it in the remote areas.

[darrelld]

I'm all for this, It brings competition to areas only served by the raping and pillaging cable companies. Over the past 4 years my Cable internet has gone from $25.00 to $55.00/mo, while the speeds have dropped from 6Mbs to 1.5Mbs. I don't happen to live within 10ft. (really it's 15,000ft.)of a telephone switching station so DSL is not an option. My only options are to continue getting bent over by Comcast, or go back to painfully slow dial-up.