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| A little clarity on BPL please BPL needs to be considered in 3 segments:
-"Smart Grid" over medium voltage lines.
-Internet Access over medium voltage lines.
-In-building Access over low voltage lines.
Levels and geography need to be considered
My GUESS is "Smart Grid" will be successful, if only
because reading things like power meters does not
require big bandwidth- each meter sending a short stream of
data when polled...how tough can it be? Low Bandwidth!
Latency is a non-issue!
Internet Access over MV is successful overseas.
Why? Europe and China have completely different
electrical grids... A MUCH higher number of subscribers
per transformer - so the economics work.
Berlin appears to be the most "powered by BPL" city.
They even have several Powerline radio stations!
"DROP" ceilings in N.A. commercial buildings are S.O.P.
So why the heck wouldn't you just run a cable? I would.
But that's not the case everywhere.
In North America, the jury's still out... frankly,
suggesting BPL for rural deployments is downright silly.
BUT, the big brains are still experimenting... Motorola
has a "surface wave" technology that looks promising. Time will tell.
The GOOD NEWS: In-building access works really well
and can be the lowest cost solution in many cases.
If a building is concrete, heritage or historical,
COMMERCIAL (not consumer grade) BPL hardware should be looked at. Hotel's, MDU's Campuses, Hospitals. Any
building without drop ceilings.
My point is all the BPL news seems to focus on the "trials
and tribulations" of BPL as a "last mile" technology,
completely ignoring it's a different segment with its own unique set of challenges, versus in-building solutions that do work.
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| The only company I knew that was doing surface wave was Corridor Systems. They moved away from access solutions and are focusing on mobile applications. Motorola's current solution is a hybrid wireless backbone and BPL on the LV wiring going into the customer premise. Did they decide to start experimenting with surface wave?
You're right that there is definitely different segments of BPL. I think BPL Internet access is DOA, but grid management will have the most success. Ironically though, the solution to grid management is already out there and proven, it's called PLC, the low bandwidth non-interfering and less costly predecessor to BPL. | |
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