Is BroadBand Over Power Lines A Dead Duck ?

[GhostShip]

It looks like the system names changing slightly but the tech is not the success story promised.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081023-stick-a-fork-in-it-a-broadband-over-powerline-post-mortem.html

Broadband over powerline (BPL) has joined the choir invisible, is pushing up the daisies, is an ex-broadband technology. Smart grids, which don't require broadband speeds, are moving forward, however.

Broadband Reports picked up on a story from last week about Manassas, Virginia's BPL network, which was one of the earliest markets, and which never attracted more than several hundred subscribers. Local amateur radio operators (hams) complained bitterly about early generations of BPL equipment, which they alleged caused interference on licensed bands. (Hams use bands in which they've been granted primary or secondary licenses, giving them priority over unintentional emitters—almost everything that carries electricity is such—and unlicensed uses, such as WiFi, where unlicensed users have access to the same frequencies.)

The Manassas operator, Comtek, tried to sell its network to Smart Grid LLC earlier this year, but the deal didn't go through. The city council opted to fund the network for the next couple of years to ease customers off and test its own smart-grid applications.

This is a very interesting peice with plenty of background info on the technology for those unfamiliar with the major players .

[White Stripes]

{rant}

* Silver Stripes is sick and tired of ham radio operators

all they do is gripe about having their 'spectrum' trampled on but do they actually -use- it? no... its just a bunch of -very- old (and --very-- rude) farts wanting to hold on to "tradition" and if you listen in they just use the bands to talk about their latest ailments.... IMO the vast majority of the ham bands need to be reclaimed and put to better use... (anyone out there -- at least in the US -- who has any contact with hams knows that the innovations they boast from times past are already over and done... and no further innovation is occuring... however in countries like japan... where they have much more legal freedom of what they can actually do with the ham bands.. tech is creepingly advancing... but with gigabit broadband speeds... well... theres not much left to innovate...)


{/rant}