Ward,
Your assumption is not valid; not all utilities have the infrastructure
already in place for what you describe. Most do not, and those few that do
probably don't have it into every home. If they did, they'd all be doing
AMR and many other things already. Not very many are at this point for a
reason, lack of infrastructure.
My question is when a utility does not have any infrastructure in place to
do any of this, why would they build two complete systems just to provide a
slow-model system and fast-model system when they could build one system
that could do both?
There would be less infrastructure and maintenance cost with only one
system, and with BPL it theoretically goes into every home or at least
every home they want it to. It could also be IP-based making system
network components modern and easily available as opposed to trying to find
obsolete devices running at slow speeds & obsolete protocols. (At least,
that's the way the I.T. folks might view it no matter how realistic or
unreallistic that might be). And installing a limited-speed,
limited-throughput system wouldn't allow more data-intensive services in
the future.
This is not to say BPL is the right solution, but to point out some faults
in some of your arguments. As you've pointed out, the overall costs of
installation, operations and interference-mitigation are the weakness of
BPL (assuming the FCC doesn't write new rules removing the last one from
the equation).
Also, I'm guessing they're still using dial-up for credit card approvals
not because the internet is too "race-car" fast, but probably due to
security and reliability concerns.
73, de ed -K0iL
-----Original Message-----
From: Ward Silver
Wireless (UHF, mostly) remote meter reading and load management systems are
already in place now and work well. Look for a tall vertical antenna on
top of a phone pole somewhere in your neighborhood - it's a collinear of
some sort.
Why would the utilities go through all the trouble and expense of replacing
a functioning system with a hugely expensive high-bandwidth system for
these minimal transactions?
Utility infrastructure is a many-short-transactions model while the BPL
model is a few-big-transactions model. They don't work the same way. It
would be like using a race car to deliver the mail.
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