Internet connection through the power grid is now here

LegacyUser

http://www.smh.com.au/icon/0108/08/news2.html
Internet connection through the power grid is now here. James Norman reports.


Wednesday, August 8, 2001


A German power consortium, RWE AG, has commercially released what it calls Powerline technology allowing German customers, schools and businesses to plug their computers into any power socket in their home, classroom or office for an Internet connection of up to two megabits per second a speed 30 times faster than today's conventional ISDN access.

Powerline technologies have been on the agenda for several years, as power companies all over the world dreamed of creating a fast, versatile and effective new data access system. But, until now, technical hitches have hindered the commercial viability or public release of powerline it has never before left the drawing board.

Yet at the same time as RWE AG Germany is making this technology widely available to the public, other power companies all over the world are simultaneously following suit.

In Brazil, where only 17 per cent of all private households have a telephone connection but 93 per cent are connected to electricity grids, RWE PowerNet is gearing up to give large parts of the population access to the worldwide communication network for the first time.

A field trial was established in May, in which 50 private households at Curitiba, the capital of the Federal State of Parana, were equipped with Powerline technology.

Endesa SA of Spain is expanding its powerline trials to 10,000 customers in Spain and Chile.

While on the surface Powerline sounds too good to be true enabling the personal computer to become fully integrated into any household without the need for messy cabling, and boasting an unprecedented speedy connection this is the first time the technology has become more than a pie-in-the-sky pipe dream.

The commercial release of Powerline in Germany may mark the beginning of a new trend towards high-speed Internet access through any power socket becoming the way of the future.

Powerline's transfer speed of up to two megabits per second means that, for example, downloading a 4MB file takes just 20 seconds by ISDN it would take about 10 minutes. "With RWE PowerNet we are making the Internet into what it really should be: a fast medium offering many people the opportunity to communicate and obtain information cheaply," said the chief executive officer of RWE Plus, Manfred Remmel. However, before anyone starts throwing away modems, there are technical problems to overcome.

One potential problem is radiation leakage - some leakage becomes inevitable when sending such large amounts of power through a single cable, and it may interfere with other radio operators.

Andreas Preuss from RWE AG's press office said, "RWE Powerline's technology complies with the limit values for interfering radiation existing in Germany. This is mainly due to the fact that the transmission power is very low [below 10 mW]. This limits the range of the transmitted signal to about 300 metres.

"As a consequence, it may happen that not all households connected to a transformer can be reached with Powerline due to the low transmission power. However, most of RWE's customer households are located within the radius mentioned."

Also, any country wishing to embrace powerline technology would have to first get governments to allocate the frequencies required for the service, a move the German parliament took in March through the lower house, for no charge to the company. Another problem is that electricity signals can fluctuate dramatically, which could in turn effect transfer speeds without any warning to the user.

Despite all these potential pitfalls, Preuss insists that at present "the field trials have advanced without a hitch".

The basic product is being offered for DM49 ($42) per month to individuals. The transfer volume of 250 megabytes included in the price corresponds to about 2,500 emails with attachments. For DM99 a month, intensive users can benefit from a transfer volume of 2,000 megabytes.

And more than just the promise of high-speed Internet access, Powerline also offers the opportunity for the personal computer to be integrated into the household as never before. As part of the household power grid, PCs could easily be programmed to turn off lights and control security devices.

Now forgive me if i wrong but ESB is a still mostly a state owned body, yes?
who have in the past said they were commited to broadband, maybe they should start to prove it,

as it stands esb lines atm cant hanlde what that company is doing, and exsensive upgrading of the lines would have to take place before they could, but it would be allot cheaper then layign fibre and at 2mbps allot faster

LegacyUser

Thats been in LA for quite some time.

Its like $40 for bandwidth the same as a ADSL line maxed out.

Anything up to OC-3 on standard lines, wow 155MB, yummy.

Our powergrid coudl'nt handle a serial coinnection type speed, thank the ESB, thank the state, we have nothing.

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Ashley Lyn

Ashley Lyn Cafagna

LegacyUser

I taught the ESB was already doing something like this, under the NDP (National Development Plan) which has a deadline to be finished I think by Mid-2002.

http://www.norcontel.ie/ndpcomms/


[This message has been edited by ando (edited 12-08-2001).]

LegacyUser

IR£1 = DM2.5

Therefore DM49 = IR£20
and DM99 = IR£40

(just so that you get an idea how much it costs)

[This message has been edited by Urban Weigl (edited 12-08-2001).]

LegacyUser

Yes, but germany has massive urban centres where this technology would suite, like a high speed *bluetooth* link in the CBD of dublin.

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Ashley Lyn

Ashley Lyn Cafagna

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by chernobyl:
Yes, but germany has massive urban centres where this technology would suite, like a high speed *bluetooth* link in the CBD of dublin.

</font>

You may have a point, but bluetooth wouldn't be a suitable technology to do that. And, Ireland has quite a few Urban centres as well, so I don't think there would be any problems offering the technology in Dublin, Cork, Galway, etc etc.

LegacyUser

i was just using bluetooth as a short range *highspeed" service.

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Ashley Lyn

Ashley Lyn Cafagna

LegacyUser

ando,
the esb are going 2 b offering 512k cable net access.they are planning 2 run fiber optic cables over there power lines.they will cover ireland in a figure 8 shape which would service a large portion of the country.

Dustaz

Its interesting that there are caps on that service. and pretty ****ty caps too

dahamsta

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by chernobyl:
i was just using bluetooth as a short range *highspeed" service. </font>

He was right though chernobyl, Bluetooth isn't suitable for this kind of application. Its range is really quite small, so it's more suited to building and small campus LAN's.

Sorry, I don't mean to be on the offensive the whole time, but there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding out there about Bluetooth.

adam

Bard

Interesting article, Gladiator... although in the topic when I saw it say "is now here", I presumed 'Ireland', as that's where 'here' is

I do recall NorWeb doing trials of Internet over powerlines in the UK, but they cancelled their plans and said it was an inviable prospect. Didn't the ESB's attempt go the same way? If I remember correctly, it did.

Still- interesting all the same to see it actually work for someone somewhere, - maybe that'll convince NorWeb or the ESB to restart their attempts.

(I could be wrong, of course, - the ESB may not have backed out of the trials... I don't think so tho')

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Bard

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'First motorbike in the bible ???? ---- a Triumph --- 'Yea verily Moses struck down the ammmanites and all the land heard the roar of his triumph !!!'

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by irishguy:
ando,
the esb are going 2 b offering 512k cable net access.they are planning 2 run fiber optic cables over there power lines.they will cover ireland in a figure 8 shape which would service a large portion of the country. </font>

Man! That's useless! I just drew a figure-8 on my Irish road map and it still misses Dublin totally, and the broadband goes to Athlone or Longford or some place.

LegacyUser

what kind of ping are we talking tho...

dahamsta

Didn't the ESB's attempt go the same way? If I remember correctly, it did.

As far as I can gather, the ESB had two plans for broadband - one was to go for telecommunications over the power network, which was dropped because of problems with the technology; and the other was to lay their own fibre alongside the ESB trunks. I think they actually did lay some fibre, but both concepts seem to be pretty dead, probably because of the lack of competition in the electricity market.

adam

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by irishguy:
ando,
the esb are going 2 b offering 512k cable net access.they are planning 2 run fiber optic cables over there power lines.they will cover ireland in a figure 8 shape which would service a large portion of the country. </font>

Hi Irishguy, do you know if there is a deadline for this or expected launch date ? i rememeber reading it might be mid 2002 but I'm not 100% sure ??

BTW, YOu have Powernet, right ? Anyway, I was wondering if powernet is any good for playing online games or not ?

LegacyUser

ando any deadline they may have had means nothing now that all major competition is gone(epower)
the only people competiting with esb is the gas company, which can only competite to a certain degree, people will allways use esb even if they have gas or oil central heating, maybe just abite less.

allso dahamsta you say esb had plans of using fibre over their power lines, ive heard this before and it strikes me as arrogant, what made esb think that would have better luck then ntl of chorus for doing this.

Allso ive seen it mentioned that we dont have a power grid able to do this, well what do you expect, it wasnt built for this, most power grids are in the same boat,
there need to be extensive uograding to the lines in germany to allow this to work.

one of the problems and the main reason esb backed out was the line couldnt handle that much data and suffered *leakage* were data was lost along the way. the germans solved thsi problem by highering the capacity of the line, i dont know exactly how they did it, i think hubson migth have more facts one how but they got it to work.

Seriously guys i think your way to fond of puttign down this country sometimes, if it will work in a third world country like Brazil i think it might just work here

dahamsta

allso dahamsta you say esb had plans of using fibre over their power lines

Over their powerlines? How do you mean? What I said was that they were planning to lay fibre alongside the existing power trunks. That is, major regional fibre.

Allso ive seen it mentioned that we dont have a power grid able to do this, well what do you expect, it wasnt built for this, most power grids are in the same boat, there need to be extensive uograding to the lines in germany to allow this to work.

The whole point of telecommunications over power lines was that you didn't need to upgrade the network, it was pre-existing, much like DSL uses the pre-existing copper network. The trick wasn't in upgrading the network, but forcing the technologies to co-exist.

one of the problems and the main reason esb backed out was the line couldnt handle that much data and suffered *leakage* were data was lost along the way. the germans solved thsi problem by highering the capacity of the line, i dont know exactly how they did it, i think hubson migth have more facts one how but they got it to work.

Actually the problem with telecommunications over power lines was one of interference. Yes, there was data loss, but it wasn't because of leakage, it was because of interference with the power channels.

adam

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by yankinlk:
what kind of ping are we talking tho...</font>

From what I know, latency is not a problem on powerline technology. I'd expect it to be about the same as ADSL/Cable/ISDN. Don't quote me on that however.

[This message has been edited by Urban Weigl (edited 12-08-2001).]

LegacyUser

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by chernobyl:
Yes, but germany has massive urban centres where this technology would suite...
</font>

Chernobyl,
You are only partly right, as RWE is planning to spread out into rural areas quite quickly.
If I remember right this was mentioned in a German Computer magazine called c't...

LegacyUser

allso dahamsta you say esb had plans of using fibre over their power lines

Over their powerlines? How do you mean? What I said was that they were planning to lay fibre alongside the existing power trunks. That is, major regional fibre.

that what i meant, but what made them think they could do a better job.

Allso ive seen it mentioned that we dont have a power grid able to do this, well what do you expect, it wasnt built for this, most power grids are in the same boat, there need to be extensive uograding to the lines in germany to allow this to work.

The whole point of telecommunications over power lines was that you didn't need to upgrade the network, it was pre-existing, much like DSL uses the pre-existing copper network. The trick wasn't in upgrading the network, but forcing the technologies to co-exist.

well in order to get this (this being the german thing)to work they have to upgrade the power lines,

one of the problems and the main reason esb backed out was the line couldnt handle that much data and suffered *leakage* were data was lost along the way. the germans solved thsi problem by highering the capacity of the line, i dont know exactly how they did it, i think hubson migth have more facts one how but they got it to work.

Actually the problem with telecommunications over power lines was one of interference. Yes, there was data loss, but it wasn't because of leakage, it was because of interference with the power channels.

Spliting hairs, the interference as far as i remember was being caused by the high voltage needed to carry the data, this is why they had to upgrade the lines to stop this.

Kix

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by dahamsta:
... and the other was to lay their own fibre alongside the ESB trunks. I think they actually did lay some fibre... </font>

I first heard about this in the mid 90s and my understanding at the time was that they had quite a bit of fiber laid in parallel with the transmission (higher voltage) portion of their network. They were running their own WAN across it and had an eye to selling on some of the bandwidth eventually. I don't know what state the plan is in these days.

K