Someone still believes in BB over power lines

Mr_Man

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DirecTV Group will expand its ISP business. The satellite-television provider is reportedly set to sign a deal with Current Group LLC to provide high-speed Internet service carried over electric power lines. Broadband-over-power-line offers Internet access that is faster than some plans from cable and phone companies.

According to the Wall Street Journal under the agreement, which is expected to be signed today, DirecTV will market a bundled package of Current's broadband and VOIP services under the DirecTV brand. It already resells high-speed Internet services from AT&T, Verizon and Qwest under their brand names.

Current is building out broadband networks in Cincinnati and Dallas-Fort Worth and is in talks with a number of utilities around the world regarding a commercial roll-out, the Journal reported. According to the report, DirecTV has yet to determine pricing, but says TV, Internet and phone services packages will be competitive with those offered by phone companies.

Sponge Bob

there is a small case for underground lines.

watty

It's a bargaining lever to get cheaper price from Clearwire's Fixed WiMax offering in USA

bminish

Sponge Bob wrote:

there is a small case for underground lines.

Leaving aside all the other issues, line reach is still a problem (laws of physics and all that) typical span distances between repeaters is around 300m for a few meg of throughput.

Solair

There are huge technical problems with BB over powerlines. They were designed to carry electricity, not data. So, the architecture is not exactly ideal for carrying any kind of signalling.

i.e.
1) The quality of the line may not be great for signalling
2) You've no idea what combination of transformers you might encounter, the signal can't pass a transformer.
3) Powerlines are not at all shielded, so both act as an antenna and a receiver for stray radiowaves. So you can get all sorts of interference and you can also create serious radio interference.
4) Equipment plugged into the lines may cause interference, particularly large electric motors.

It's pretty complicated and very unsuccessful technology.

bminish

Solair wrote:

It's pretty complicated and very unsuccessful technology.

One of the best ways to see just how unsuccessful is to zoom out on the Stock price of Ambient Corporation who are one of the leading Powerline broadband providers in the US

http://finance.google.com/finance?q=OTC%3AABTG

they were worth over 9 dollars a share in 1998, they are now worth 6 cents a share

Solair

Yes, it was one of those amazing technologies that was hyped to death in the dot.com boom years.

Sadly, it seems serious data transfer over power lines would require totally new infrasturcture, it simply wouldn't be worth a power company's time, money or effort when you can achieve similar / better results using wireless technologies and when cable and DSL are generally readily available.

Power-line technology would be as prone to problems, if not more so, than DSL in rural areas too. So it certainly wouldn't be a great answer to rural Ireland's broadband woes.

ESB and other power companies elsewhere are more likely to leverage their phsysical network using fiber optics layed alongside power lines / pushed through existing duct work.

They'd have a serious chance of rolling out decent fiber-to-kerb networks!

watty

It's ironic that esb fibre is more accessible than eircom's

gerryo

Solair wrote:

ESB and other power companies elsewhere are more likely to leverage their phsysical network using fiber optics layed alongside power lines / pushed through existing duct work.

They'd have a serious chance of rolling out decent fiber-to-kerb networks!

The ESB have access to almost all properties via the power lines, running fibre inside power cable buried ducts seems like the way to go. Are there machines that can pull the fibre inside the 1.5" ducts right up to the meter?

Seems like a great way to cable up the country, or it it too labour intensive & not likely to get the ROI?

watty

You can "blow" fibre into a duct, but it depends on what is in there. it's not too likely.
It's encouraging that the Government have realised that ESB network is a "natural" Monopoly and thus should not be privatised. Pity they didn't realise this about the phone network.

Blaster99

I posted a thing here a year or so ago about Danish power utilities rolling out a FTTH network to most of their customers. It didn't seem particularly expensive. No idea where it's at now.

Comparing ESB with Eircom is futile. There are no major advances in power transmission infrastructure whereas telecoms moves forward and requires constant investment in all parts of the network. It's best to leave that to a private company, as has been shown practically everywhere in the world.

Sponge Bob

Its Denmark so they are of course banging away at it.

they are rolling out GPON rather than Ethernet so I suggest you all edumacate yourselves in GPON which is very scalable and not outrageously compex to deploy.

Voipjunkie

Blaster99 wrote:

Comparing ESB with Eircom is futile. There are no major advances in power transmission infrastructure whereas telecoms moves forward and requires constant investment in all parts of the network. It's best to leave that to a private company, as has been shown practically everywhere in the world.

That would be possibly true if you had a telecoms owner that was interested in developing the business rather than dividing the company up for quick profit taking and lumping it with massive debts which negate against investment in infrastructure in the future.

The physical network should never have been sold handing it over to a private company to manage has delayed the rollout of broadband as they seek to protect their investment and loaded huge debt onto eircom that it did not have and we have lost any control over the network.