Broadband over power lines

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ssmaniac

SatelliteGuys Family
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Mar 2, 2005
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Curious if anyone has tried the broadband internet access over power lines. It is newly available to me in Cincinnati and I'm thinking about it. Starting price is $19.99/mo with no contract; speed is only 500k/s (or .5 Mbps, which is about 10 times max dial up speed, but less than DSL speeds around 3 Mbps). Any comments are welcome. Thanks
 
korsjs said:
there are some articles in our broadband forum.

Thanks korsjs--I didn't even notice the broadband forum! I'll check it out. Thanks again.
 
BPL is what my (former) employer is staking their business on. So far they're still shrinking. (OTCBB: GEEK.OB)

LER
 
You can get DSL from Verizon for around $15 and it is over 700K. The thing with the broadband over power lines is that you could just plug it into any wall and get the service making it much more accesible in different rooms. With a wireless router with a good signal it wouldn't matter about that.
 
A friend tried "current" and thought it was okay. The only thing he raved about was the pairity. Most broadband systems limit your upload speed. With Current you get the same up as you do down. BTW, you can pay more to get more speed. I think the max is 3 Mb for about the same price as Road Runner. But again RoadRunner is 5Mb down and 45kb up. Current is 3Mb down and 3Mb up. At least that's what it was when my friend did their trial.

BTW, latency is the time a command takes to reach the destination and react. This is extremely important with on-line gaming. As far as I could tell, it was generally good. I don't have real numbers though.

Here is their web site: http://www.current.net/ServiceAndPricing/Residential/Broadband/PricingAndBenefits/

See ya
Tony
 
Thanks TNGTony and others. I signed up for "Current" and will post in the broadband forums how it goes (I should have equip by next week.)

BTW, Tony, I'm glad to see a fellow Cincinnatian as a staff member here. Love the site. (Who Dey)
 
Be prepared to find a new ISP down the road. To my knowledge there has never been a successful (read: profitable) implementation of BPL. BPL requires special bridges at every transformers, has a low overall throughput, and is generally a horrible enviroment for high-bandwidth applications due to the RF noise.
 
Broadband power line problems

Yes you are exactly right about the RF bridge at every transformer. Transformers act as choke coils for the bpl transmissions. It is the same scenario as DSL suffers in my area because many of the phone line pairs have load coils to boost the dial tone signal but choke off the higher dsl frequencies. Many people in my area cannot get DSL because of these load coils or "phone line transformers".

For many years some power companies have phone systems that use the power lines for communication so that power linemen can talk to each other over the power lines many miles apart during service or line construction, so this concept is not really new.:)
 
anoter bpl issue

I also forgot to mention that the frequencies used to send broadband over power lines runs from 500 KHZ to 25 mhz. The problem with this is that in the united states, our powerlines are not twisted pair or shielded in any way therefore they radiate interference from the broadband. This interference will make AM radios completely non-functional as well as low VHF tv reception problems.

Ham radio and emergency commuinications in HF range including citizen band radio transmissions are jammed by this interference. This has already happened in Japan and europe. I think with the present frequencies employed, it will be too troublesome in the united states.
 
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