Last week, the Austin City Council approved spending up to $317,500 to test Broadband Over Powerline internet service. A spokesman for the group had this to say regarding BPL provider technology in Austin Texas.
‘”Everyone is saying how great this is,” Collins said of broadband over power lines, which for years has been touted as a third high-speed Internet pipe into homes and businesses, competing with cable and the digital subscriber line service offered by phone companies. “All we want to know is, what does this really do?’
As is the case in Texas, the established power companies are unsure how much strain Broadband Over Powerline will put on their existing power grid. With utility companies sometimes competing for more power to push those air conditioners or baseboard heaters, they want to take their time and test this technology first. It’s good to see Broadband Over Powerline testing being done in Austin Texas. Even if BPL isn’t online for a few years, this is a start in the right direction.
[...] This is a blow to the Amateur Radio operators opposing BPL. With areas like Texas scheduled to test Broadband over Power Line, and this affirmation by the FCC, the momentum is beginning to roll. [...]
This is not a blow to the Radio Amateurs, as the city of Austin has them participating in the test; to see how much interfererence is caused to short wave reception and transmissions by licensed stations. Already, one licensed mobile operator tester has reported that in the core of the test area, reception of NIST standard frequency station WWV is drowned out on portable receivers. This is not good, as WWV is widely used by scientific and ham radio operators and Short wave listeners as a calibration standard for their reception equipment.
Some of the ham bands were adequately notched as is required of BPL to avoid interference, but some were not; showing just how flawed presnt BPL technology is. BPL defies the physics of radio propagation; you do not put radio signals onto a medium, (open wiring) and not have problems with the signal leaking off the wires as they act as antennas.
One of the challenges to BPL is to operate without creating interference to FCC licensed users of the short wave spectrum. Unfortunately overlooked by the FCC, is that the short wave receiver user, who has a free right to listen to any frequency, has no easy way to overcome local interference by the leaky radiation of BPL carrying power lines. The BPL system does not include a way to sense when its power goes astray, and intrudes into the reception zone of other users of the short wave spectrum.
Stuart,
Thank you for shedding more light on the details of the testing, and results received in Austin.
The City of Austin abandoned the BPL trial in October 2007 after disappointing broadband capacity results and reliability issues.
The City’s final BPL report can be found at:
http://p1k.arrl.org/~ehare/bpl/COAAE_BPL_Final_Report.pdf
Thanks Glen