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Broadband Over Power Lines vs. Radio Relayers
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Jun 20, 2004 02:50 PM
from the breaking-too-many-eggs-perhaps dept.
from the breaking-too-many-eggs-perhaps dept.
amaiman writes "Recently, broadband Internet access has been increasing around the country. These broadband signals, while providing Internet access to remote communities that would normally not be able to receive broadband, are causing enormous interference to the radio spectrum. This article details some of the problems, and a video available on the American Radio Relay League's (ARRL) site shows exactly how much interference the broadband power lines can cause. Detailed information is also available on the ARRL site."
Related Stories
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Technology: FCC Dealt Setback In BPL Push 177 comments
SonicSpike writes in with word that an appeals court has dealt a setback to the FCC's plans to encourage broadband over power lines. The court ruled that the FCC erred when it withheld parts of the studies it had used in arriving at its position on BPL. The court did not rule that the FCC's decision was incorrect or that it should be revisited. According to the article, about 5,000 people nationwide subscribe to BPL in 35 pilot projects. We've been discussing BPL for years. "...a federal appeals court has sided in part with amateur radio operators who challenged rules designed to speed the nascent Internet service's rollout. When setting rules for BPL operators nearly two years ago, the Federal Communications Commission said it was trying to encourage deployment of a 'third pipe' to compete with cable and DSL services, while establishing limits aimed at protecting public safety, maritime, radio-astronomy, aeronautical navigation, and amateur radio operators from harmful interference. The American Radio Relay League, which represents amateur... radio operators, however, promptly sued the agency, contending that the FCC's approach was insufficient to ward off interference with its radios and inconsistent with its previous rules. On Friday, the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia on Friday issued a ruling (PDF) that took issue with the way the FCC arrived at its rules."
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FCC's Duplicity On BPL Revealed 97 comments
eldavojohn writes "Ars has a summary of the curious events surrounding the death of broadband over power lines (BPL). We've discussed BPL's trials and advances here many times. The Federal Communications Commission's go-ahead was halted last year by a federal court, after a suit by the American Radio Relay League over claims of unacceptable radio interference from BPL. The DC Court of Appeals judge noted, 'There is little doubt that the [FCC] deliberately attempted to exclude from the record evidence adverse to its position.' The ARRL's FOIA request to obtain non-redacted documents finally bore fruit under the Obama administrations more open FOIA guidelines. The ARRL's preliminary analysis of the released documents point out a few critical areas where the FCC redacted data that is clearly adverse to the claims of BPL proponents. By rights, this ought to lay BPL to rest once and for all." A story at Broadband Reports notes that BPL is dying on its own, as most of the vendors who had been testing it "have since moved on to promote smart electrical grid functionality."
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But I thought... (Score:5, Interesting)
But I thought that hams where saying that BPL would destroy radio communication for 100's of miles around? This video only shows the effect when they are very near the powerlines.
They also play word games by saying it is on the agenda at the FCC. On the agenda doesn't mean that they will approve it, it simply means they are looking at it.
Lastly, it doesn't help hams when hams say they will just pump out a 1kw signal to drownout the BPL signal, that action will simply result in the group with the most votes winning, and that isn't the hams.
Re:But I thought... (Score:5, Interesting)
You forget that amateur radio is the primary user on said frequencies. This means that if their broadcasting interferes with your Part-15 "This device shall make no interference, and this device shall receive interference, even if it causes undesired operation" broadband service, tough shit. This doesn't mean that ham radio operators are out to screw over the world, but many, many operators have very powerful rigs and won't really be very worried if you try to move into their territory on the spectrum.
I wonder if anyone has looked into how this'll affect business band radio, which is often on frequencies near amateur radio. That'll be an interesting one, since those users are specifically granted commercial licenses on those frequencies for communication purposes...
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Re:But I thought... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:But I thought... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:But I thought... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is not just a Ham Radio thing. BPL is bad engineering, pure and simple. It's placing RF on huge spans of unbalanced feedline and somehow expecting it not to radiate. Any college student in engine
Re:But I thought... (Score:5, Informative)
Note that it's only a *very* small subset of the ham community that's even considering deliberately jamming BPL. Most hams are considerate to a fault, and wouldn't retaliate like that.
But for now, if you need to use 1500 watts to make a contact, it's legal for a ham to use 1500 watts to make that contact (on most bands), even if it causes problems for BPL. The law says you need to use the minimum amount of power to get the job done, and most hams do that. But if you need 1500 watts to get the job done, then you can do that.
(For the record, I'm AD5RH. And I don't have any equipment capable of putting out over 200 watts.)
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Re:But I thought... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah. Good luck. The minute that happens, Mexico and Canada will start running high power at those frequencies.
Radio waves don't care about political borders. And it took Canada 20 years before we even got laws banning pirate US satellite equipment. It'll be another 100 before we get laws to protect US powerline broadband.
I suppose if you live in the center of the US, y
Re:But I thought... (Score:4, Informative)
You forget that the FCC rules aren't run like regular laws. The FCC comes up with policies and procedures to follow, and the federal government's laws only state that if you want to participate, you go talk to the FCC and follow their judgements.
Remember too, that ham radio has been around for fifty years. Some very high profile people like Barry Goldwater have been ham radio operators. There might not be anyone of particular notoriety that stands out in the hobby right now, but there are well established lobbyist groups, a close-knit community, and usually willing to stand up for the priviledges granted to them. They won't just roll over.
The real fun will start as soon as a BPL installation jams an automated repeater, and that repeater's owner presses the FCC to fine the BPL owner, which under their rules they'd have to at least investigate.
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Longer than 50 years (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:But I thought... (Score:2, Insightful)
de OH6GFR
Re:But I thought... (Score:5, Informative)
BTW, it's not a matter of pumping up the transmit power either. It's on the receive where BPL causes the biggest problems. You're already trying to listen to a whisper in crowd, and BPL is like an obnoxious car salesman with a bullhorn.
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Cumulative effects (Score:5, Informative)
Its like people talking in the background - a couple of people don't do much harm but when you try and talk across a room full of quietly talking people two things happen
1. The cumulative background noise reduces the signal
2. You turn the volume up (as the amateur radio people will have to and although entitled too don't wish too because it causes other users problems)
When you turnt he volume up, they all have to talk louder, so you get a fight between high and higher BPL power (to avoid radio wiping out internet, and higher and higher radio power for the same reason). At which point nobody can communicate usefully and lots of third parties are harmed.
HF interference isn't just an amateur radio problem either - you might well find you get 802.11 dead zones if you are near a power line using it. You may not be able to use radio controlled toys in an area with too many power lines and so on. Finally HF is essential to things like flying medical services and some rural communcation systems.
It all gets quite messy when this happens because good radio practice is the lowest possible power. The lower the power you can use the more people can use the same frequency. If everyone has to use 1KW then you'll get a lot less frequencies.
I'd also say their description of the FCC is in tune with its historical decision making - just look at the monopolisation of US commercial radio and the continued unneccessary exclusion of most small transmitters which could exist and other countries have proved are not a problem. Of course BPL background noise might well wipe out the scope for very low power radio stations too.
BTW: BPL trials in the UK (way before the US) were shelved for several reasons but intereference was a big one.
It shouldn't be insoluble - one nice property of radio is that if you can get the BPL encoding frequencies high enough then the interference problems become much less of an issue.
(PS: I defy you to find a radio astronomer who won't use expletives when asked abtut BPL..)
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Re:But I thought... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are far more users on the HF-band than just the hams. There are "small" communities like military and air traffic who are opposing BPL as well because it would also ruin their ways to communicate over a long distance without dragging cables with them or to have many radio relay stations along their routes.
Of course then there is satellite communications, but I don't think we will see gear suitable for, lets say, spec-op -troops to carry with them all the time to provide them reliable enough way to communicate with others like they can do with their small HF-radios.
And what about emergency situations? All communications and power is cut out for large areas. How would you call for help? Via radio, of course. But because of BPL nobody can hear your scream. "But hey", you would say, "then there will be no BPL around to mess with the communications". Yes, but there where the power and communcations, and the help of course, is, there might also be BPL so it would be hard for them to receive your message and your critical help might not arrive in time.
No, don't think me as an enemy of technology even after this. BPL is good technology, but at the moment I can't keep BPL mature enough yet to be used for what many are willing to use it now. It may be great technology for a last mile or to be used inside the building, but over airlines (or what ever you call telephone wires hanging on poles) for long distance not. Some European countries (e.g. Germany, IIRC) have banned BPL because of its interferencies and on many more countries it hasn't started to become popular because there has been more problems than success with current BPL technology.
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Re:But I thought... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's shoddy engineering that will cause interference to all HF users. These users are not the intended recipients of the signal in the slightest, therefore, it's an application of a technology to power lines that doesn't belong there.
I'd love to see my power lines bring broadband to my home faster and cheaper than my DSL or Cable connections. But not at the cost of trashing the radio spectrum. Find anot
Re:But I thought... (Score:5, Informative)
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Yet another example... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Yet another example... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Yet another example... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a amateur radio operator, and I'm in favor if BPL if reasonable precautions are taken. In other words, hold the BPL companies to the same part 15 rules that all other unlicensed users of licensed portions have to follow (Short version: unlicensed devices operating under part 15 of the FCC rules cannot cause interfearance to licensed services, and must cease operation if interfearance occurs until the cause of the interfearance can be fixed.).
The problem is that I never see this happening. Lets say that I find my local utility is generating interfearance that renders significant portions of the bands allocated to amateur radio unusable. I call the power company and report the problem. When the line workers show up, we manage to agree that the interfearing signal is from their BPL system. (In reality, I imagine that it would take a lot of work to convince the power company that it is their problem). Most likely, the only soluction to the problem will be for the power company to either reduce the power of the BPL signal on the offending portion of the power lines, or to use a filter to notch out the offending frequencies. Either option would degrade BPL service to some of their customers. I seriously doubt that either the power companies will voluntariy degrade service to solve interfearance problems or the FCC will force the power companies to degrade their BPL service in order to solve interfearance problems.
The other issue is that the frequencies which BPL providers will use can quite easily propagate around the world. Lets say that a BPL signal is found to interfear with some licensed service. (amateur, fixed, maritime, land mobile, military, etc.) How do you determine the source of the interfearance when it could be any of a large number of BPL providers accross the country?
I have nothing agaist the use of BPL withing existing part 15 rules. I simply doubt that it will be possible to solve any interfearance problems that occur.
KC8DEI
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Re:Yet another example... (Score:4, Informative)
Now imagine there was some kind of full scale attack on the US where multiple cities were affected. Phones are out, cells are out (or like during 9/11 useless) forget the Internet and your lucky to even have electricity. Hams are no longer operating on HF because some short sited people, who are more concerned with their stock investments, got BPL pushed through. Who is going to provide not only local but long distance communications? You?
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Re:Yet another example... (Score:3, Insightful)
While I agree that ham radio would be the best way of doing comms, there are other alternatives like satellite links, although they aren't very efficient for local communications.
The attack that you speak of seems to shout out NUKE to me, so I will just point out that your radio on the giant antenna probably won't survive the emp from the blast.
I do agree with you though, in any non-nuclear scenario, HF radio is the best way to do thin
Re:Yet another example... (Score:3, Interesting)
Add in the fact that in order to receive distant stations over BPL noise would probably require good sized antennas on high structures (towers) and that most neighborhood's pseudo-environmental "I'm on the homeowner's board" soccer moms gasp in horror at the thought that someone's hobby might include a large metal tower in their yard, because of some stupid perception that they're "ugly" (even though her 1 MPG SUV does more harm to the environment than anyone's tower ever did) and the FACT that over 9
Re:Yet another example... (Score:4, Interesting)
Good point. And it further reinforces my argument that the FCC needs to get their act together and stop pandering to people who play these silly games.
Just like, oh I think it was Clear Channel that tried to get XM to stop broadcasting local news because it interfered with the local market. Translation: When you cannot compete fairly, get the government involved and shut down your competitors.
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No more HAM Radio (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No more HAM Radio (Score:3, Informative)
Art is a true "radio-man" who enjoys 75 Meter AM and Sideband when he's not on the air entertaining people via AM Broadcast.
Seriously (Score:4, Interesting)
Have it already (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Have it already (Score:5, Informative)
If you can pick up these boxes with these tools, then these boxes are not BPL., unless they're some sort of bridge between BPL and WiFi, or can be managed via WiFi or something?
Aha ... google to the rescue!
So they are bridges. Seems an odd way to do it though -- BPL CAN go all the way into the house (that's part of why people like it), so why are they using WiFi for that? If all they're doing is putting APs in each neighborhood, why use BPL at all? Just run standard cox or fiber optics to each AP.Parent
Re:Have it already (Score:2)
Re:Have it already (Score:2)
It is cheaper. It costs money to run fiber or coax. Of course my town is stupid. They are running miles and miles of water mains and NOT runnig fiber at the same time!
What a waiste.
Re:Have it already (Score:3, Informative)
This is so old, it should be the other way around (Score:5, Funny)
My own power company gave up and found it more efficient to simply lay TCP/IP fiber along the new power lines instead.
No, the new thing is not TCP/IP over electricity lines, but electricity over TCP/IP lines [faqs.org], as detailed in RFC3251.
Re:This is so old, it should be the other way arou (Score:3, Interesting)
BPL has been tried in Germany by almost all major power companies, but they have basically given up on it. Reason: It does not work, plain and simple.
There are a few companies around that sell so called PLC-to-Ethernet adaptors you can plug into your power outlet to bridge floors or so, but they're not working either.
Testing has shown that the signal attenuation between two of these PLC adaptors is actually higher than the free space attenuation - so these adaptors would work just as good or even better
What about good old lasers? (Score:4, Interesting)
units, I remember the output was only a few hundred milliwatts but we were p2ping 5Km or more in fair
visibility. Surely optical wavelenghs are not restricted and civillian versions of this sort of
optical tranciever are available? Someone has to line them up at installation, but its as easy as doing a microwave dish. I think a network of point to point laser trancievers would be ideal for remote raural coms in the out back and beyond. With this kind of power efficiency repeaters would easily run from solar cells. What think the
Re:What about good old lasers? (Score:2)
Re:What about good old lasers? (Score:3, Informative)
February is old news - what's happened since then? (Score:5, Informative)
Articles about BPL that get technical often bring up comparisons between how it works in the US vs. Europe. For various historical/technical evolution reasons, including population densities, the two sides of the pond have much different concentrations of number of users per power transformer, and supposedly the technology makes a lot more economic sense in Europe. In the US, one of the more interesting markets is rural access, where distances are too long for DSL and cable TV isn't very common - satellite's an obvious alternative, but satellite latency is annoying. Non-Amish farmers have tended to be fairly wired for a long time - the commodities and futures markets have a major impact on how you can get the best price for your crops, and even old modems and Apple IIs were good enough to get trading information and text-based weather reports, but more bandwidth is always better.
But the other obvious market is that it's another wired or near-wired access method to get bits to your house, besides the Phone Companies and cable modems, which means it increases competition for the phone business as well as data business. Power companies already have a certain amount of potential simply from owning right-of-way, though sometimes the phone companies own the poles, and state Public Utility Commission regulators often create all kinds of strange rulings about who can do what with the shared assets (a problem cable tv companies have had, especially when they want to sell bandwidth on the fibers they run in shared right-of-way.)
In My day... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:In My day... (Score:2)
That should have read:
Back in my day, we had to make HF signals by building our own rigs, by HAND! We had to trek thirty miles uphill in the snow to the local Radio Shack or Sears store to buy the kit, and when they ditn't have all of the diodes, capacitors, and crystal kits we needed we had to trek back three weeks later when their shipment came in, carrying it all home in the snow! When we finally got everything, we had to sold
BPL is the wrong technology at the wrong time (Score:5, Interesting)
why dont they just (Score:2, Interesting)
that way nothing gets in, nothing gets out - everybody wins (exceept those who pay for the cable)
Re:why dont they just (Score:3, Informative)
As far as shielding power cables though, they don't do it because it's not effective, the shielding breaks down due to the elements, it's harder to diagnose a problem with the power grid, and probably a whole slew of other things.
The idea of BPL in it's current form is disgusting (Score:5, Insightful)
Under good conditions, you can transmit halfway across the world, with just 1-5 Watts of transmission power. The Amateur Radio community knows this as "QRP" operation, and it is quite popular. So, yes, even small amounts of HF noise will go a long way to interfere with shortwave communication.
20 years ago a sizable amount of communication was still being done by shortwave (HF) radio, and anybody thinking about poisioning large chunks of HF spectrum would've been declared a raving lunatic. Every kHz of HF spectrum was (and still is) a prized posession. Look up any frequency book from the 80's and you'll see that there wasn't a Hertz of HF spectrum unallocated, and it was (and still is) tightly controlled by international agreements. For large Radio stations (BBC, VOA), it is still the only way to connect to people in dictatorships and less advanced countries.
Today, most commercial and military communication in the US has moved to satellite; Only smaller services (in the west), third world countries, radio stations and HAM radio operators use HF. Of course, why would large power companies care about other countries or the BBC news ?
The HF spectrum is still the most valuable piece of electromagentic real estate there is in the World. Purposefully injecting additional noise into the band for no other reason than to save a few bucks is a terrible mistake and shows ignorance and recklessness on a staggering level.
Very Important Thing (Score:5, Informative)
A very important yet often overlooked thing to keep in mind while thinking about "broadband over power lines," as I have already written countless times [slashdot.org] with little effect, is the very fact that it all has started as a scam. The idea has been introduced by Luke Stewart, a scam artist who has promised more than billion gigabits per second (sic) with his "Media Fusion" snake oil.
This scam and those billions gigabits per second was the only reason why "broadband over power lines" has been ever considered in the first place. See these links [slashdot.org] for sources and much more informative details and background.
Link (Score:5, Informative)
I have found a direct link to the article I was quoting [slashdot.org] in my previous post, The Electric Kool-Aid Bandwidth Test [wired.com] by Evan Ratliff. It is long but very interesting and enlightening. True eye opener. Enjoy.
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Re:Very Important Thing (Score:3, Interesting)
or Optical Fiber, their bandwidth increases and interference GOES AWAY. The reason this solution has not been adopted is 100% political, like the rest of this mess.
The facts:
The problem with BPL *is the wire part*
* The wire severely limits broadband throughput.
* The wire acts like an antenna, disrupting other services.
* The wire reduces the range between repeaters, killing economy of service.
* The wire acts like
highspeed over HF (Score:3, Interesting)
A local start-up was working on a highspeed network for rural areas. It used HF in a licenced band so interferance would not have been an issue. Because the system used HF one tower could cover quite a large area. The speeds were not lightning fast but were faster then modems. I believe the project goal was just a little faster then sattelite.
Unfortunately the project was killed for two reasons. The first was patents. There are some (arguably obvious) patents that cover highspeed networks over HF. The patents owners were not interested in developing the technology themselves, rather they wanted to charge exhorbitant fees to licence the patents. Given enough money this issue could have been resolved, but when coupled with the second problem project was canceled. The second problem was lack of a market.
From the start the system was designed to serve sparsely populated rural areas. This system could not compete with DSL, cable or 802.11 based systems. The bandwidth was slower, and more the system was more expensive. The setup costs were high as a client station needed a good HF transciever and antenna. The service fees were high as the base stations were designed to only handle a few customers. The system had to be heavily optimized for rural areas in order to achieve the large distances required. The optimizations were such that it could not even be scaled back to compete in the quasi-rural suburban environments. The system was expensive. While an end customer might be willing to pay $1000 to setup a station, plus $100/month for highspeed no provider was willing to take the risk when a base tower could easily cost $100k just to install.
I suspect that highspeed of power lines is going to face similar challenges and suffer the same fate. The setup costs are deffinately lower, but the system is still faced with some of the same technical problems. Long distances cause more noise, which lowers bandwidth, which reduce the number of customers on a given segment. With fewer customers there is less chance of a profit.
NTIA Study on BPL (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Interference (Score:3, Insightful)
Amateur radio is probably more relevant now than since the 1940's. Its real reason for existance beyond the first uregulated days of "gee isnt this neat" was to provide a steady supply of wireless operators
Re:Interference (Score:4, Interesting)
It is also nice to have public radio bands that are not controled by commercial interests, in much the same way that it is nice to have public parks. Free of commercial interests amature radio bands are free (as in beer) to use. More importantly amature radio bands can be used in new and innovative ways that commercial interests are not interested in supporting.
Unfortunately these public radio bands are not as easily accessible as public parks. Licences and tests aren't the problem. RF is fragile and proveing that you will use it responsibly is important. A big problem is, ironically, the ARRL.
The ARRL has fought so hard to protect their radio bands that they risk loseing everything. The ARRL has lost its relavence to the general public. Amature operators around the world have been extremely reluctant to change. The old amatures have always welcomed new amatures, but they haven't gone out of there way to find new amatures. There has always been a huge source of new amatures in the hacker community. The ARRL needs to do more encourage these hackers to become radio amatures.
The current structure and activities of the ARRL does not encourage new participation. Young radio hackers are not interested in DX competitions and making 10 second contacts to fill out a QSL card. Young hackers are not interested in making contact with some grumpy old guy half way around the world just to hear what ailments he has. (This is a far too common occurance.)
Young hackers are interested in making world wide, community based, digital networks. They are interesetd in freedom of speech and privacy issues. They want to use encryption. Many of the old amatures are affraid that the young hackers want to move in and change everything. This is only partly true. The hackers do want to change a few things, but they are also more then willing to work with the community. Look at groups such as Seattle Wireless. These guys are essentially rogue freebanders. The ARRL needs to modernize themselves and the FCC to turn these freebanders into licenced amatures.
If the ARRL and similar groups don't do more to encourage new participation there won't be amature radio in few decades time, because there won't be many amature radio operators left alive. The recent easing of licence and band restrictions will help, but much more needs to be done.
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Re:Interference (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.arrl.org/field/regulations/allocate.
If you add them all up, it's around 3 MHz total I think. Enough for one person to get 3Mbits/sec.
So what this should tell you is that there are lots of other users in the 0.5-30 MHz spectrum space. It's going to stomp on lots of services, not only Amateur Radio.
Amateur Radio is just a tiny user of this spectrum.
BTW, 0.5-30MHz is all the frequencies which we can reliably use for long distance communications. That is just under 30 MHz of bandwidth. Go look up how much bandwidth just ONE HDTV station takes up....
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