News US plugs into power-line broadband

It's been trialled to death over here in the UK, and didn't amount to much. Will it fare better in the Land of the Free? This from elReg:

US telecoms regulator - the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) - has given the green light for operators to provide broadband over power lines in a move which it hopes will increase the availability of high-speed net access and increase competition.

In a ruling yesterday the FCC said it wanted to "encourage the development of Access Broadband over Power Line (Access BPL) systems" while ensuring that the technology does not interfere with other devices. It added: "By facilitating access to BPL, the commission takes an important step toward increasing the availability of broadband to wider areas of the country because power lines reach virtually every home and community. In areas where consumers already have broadband access, BPL can enhance competition by providing another broadband alternative."

In the UK, Southern Electric is one company that is already offering broadband over power cables. The service costs from £19.99 a month for a 150k service although availability is limited.

Don't moan if you follow this link and find nothing else, it's a short article....

 

I doubt it will fare any better here, in the "land of the fee". They've been talking this up for a couple of years and while it has potential, they'll probably muck it up.

 

(im from the US) this is probably true, the only real way to go here in my opinion is a local broadband company. I have fuse adsl, no one except any one in my city has ever heard of it, but its $32 a month for 3000/768 and free unlimited newsgroups access (6 concurrent connections, 14 days retention time)

no powerline broadband is ever going to take off in my opinion, cable and dsl are already too rooted (or something like that)

 

well, I could see it being more viable in the vast rural areas that don't have dsl options (yet). I just recently got DSL about a year ago and I live in a town, albeit small one. I could easily see wide area wifi overtaking it in the time it will take to impliment it.

 

that £17's for 3meg god this country sucks.


/on topic/ how would this affect peoples power line LAN setups?

 

Hampshire (where I live) was the place where the power line internet was trialed, my teacher at my old school tried it and he didnt seem to have any problems with it. But how the hell does it work? Cos all I can think of in my mind is a modem connected to a power station

explain... and how fast is it? Cos from what I've heard its a similar price to ADSL

 

from what I read, if it follows the same technique, the data is actually passed in the fields *outside* of the wires. I do not know how it is collected or transmitted.

But I do remember that it was not an internal signal. It was passed within the magnetic fields of the power lines!

 

Dude, i live in the US and i hate you P).

Where the heck to you live? and can i move there?

 

As far as I know it's just a high-frequency but low power signal within the AC lines. The 50Hz (of 60Hz for the US) is filtered and decoded. A signal is then sent to transmit so it is very similar to ADSL.

 

Nice little primer on powerline broadband at Howstuffworks.