[TowerTalk] BPL -- my ONLY comment

[W0UN -- John Brosnahan]

 >The last time that I checked, it was Michael Powell, a REPUBLICAN,
 >that was practically jumping up and down and frothing at the mouth
 >about how excited he was about BPL.  And let's not forget that other
 >famous REPUBLICAN, G.W.Bush, who APPOINTED him and also
 >cheered on BPL as though it were the 2nd coming!
 >


My ONLY comment on BPL--

For the record  --

Powell was appointed as an FCC commissioner by Bill CLINTON.
Bush only made him chairman.  But as chairman he still only has
one vote.

Something that seems to upset a lot of Democrats is the change of
ownership of stations by groups such as Clear Channel--also
attributed to Bush's FCC.   Actually this was also done under Clinton
as well, at the enactment of the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

Only thing done under Bush was to TAKE NO FURTHER ACTION
on the ownership rules.

Nothing is EVER as simple as it seems--especially when it is
described in sound bites.

--John


 >Michael K. Powell is Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
 >Chairman Powell was nominated by President William J. Clinton to a 
Republican
 >seat on the Commission, and was sworn in on November 3, 1997. He was
 >designated chairman by President George W. Bush on January 22, 2001.



I found this little note to be of interest--providing some historical
perspective of BPL.

http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/remark,8310545~mode=flat

BPL the sad history, the myths and true reality
First a little history (those that ignore history get to repeat the 
mistakes) BPL (AKA PLC/PLT/DPL) is a tired old legacy technology that has 
struggled with interference issues since it was first rolled out in 
Manchester, England in 1997 (one year before the introduction of DSL to 
Europe). Nortel designed the system. The UK authorities tolerated the 
interference for a time but when the emergency services traced interference 
to BPL it was shut down.

Development moved to Germany, Nortel struggled on and eventually decided 
that the interference issues could not be resolved. Siemens then took up 
the lead, after several thousand customers had been connected up, Siemens 
came to the same conclusion as Nortel and exited the business. The next 
company to enter the business was Ascom based in Switzerland. Then an 
Israeli company called Mainnet entered the BPL market using chips from a 
Spanish company called DS2.

Tests were made in Japan and the authorities banned BPL due to the 
interference problems. Next Finland shut down their BPL system due to 
interference problems.

By 2003 there were 7,000 users in Europe with a multitude of test sites all 
small scale. BPL customer growth was stagnant.

The U.S. was never considered a market for BPL because of the architecture 
of the electrical distribution system. In most of Northern Europe 
electrical distribution is underground with about 200~300 houses for each 
transformer. In the U.S. much of the electrical distribution is overhead 
with up to 6 houses sharing a transformer.

In what can only be described as a desperate last ditch attempt to sell 
product and survive, the BPL industry created a "phantom" product that 
answered the FCC's need for rural broadband. The myth was propagated that 
BPL was the answer to rural broadband deployment. The FCC commissioners 
bought the story, the press talked about Internet at every socket.

The reality is that of all the Internet distribution technologies BPL is 
the least suited to go any distance. Every 2,000 feet an expensive repeater 
in needed to boost the signals.

Now to the myths

Clean technology myth
Tales of interference had preceded BPLs arrival, the myth that the 
interference issue had been solved (first generation problem!) was told to 
anyone who would listen. The lobbyists were very successful, they managed 
to get an FCC commissioner to state that the interference complaints were 
"unsubstantiated". How the interference problem had been solved was not 
made clear.

The reality is that the interference is even worse than ever, the 
modulation technique has been changed so that the interference sounds like 
noise and for many users it will look like a faulty radio issue. Tracking 
the source and proving the cause will be difficult.

High speed myth
To add speed to the solution for rural broadband was "icing on the cake". 
To create the illusion of speed, trial/demo systems where set up where four 
or five users enthused about speeds in the megabit range. BPL is a shared 
system and real world results with typical economic user numbers are about 
250K (Broadband? more like Midband).

In conclusion
The only people who will profit from BPL are the power companies who will 
roll out niche systems in the few markets where the economics make sense. 
It will only take a few systems to trash the radio spectrum for a 
substantial portion of the western hemisphere.

There are many better ways to provide Internet access, when the choices are 
rated, BPL but any test comes bottom of the list however you make the 
measurement.