Cincinnati Plugs In

here comes static on the HF bands.

Actually, I think they use Homeplug technology, which notches out the ham bands from its transmit spectrum to avoid interference.

What about all the harmonics of the fundamental frequency? Notching out the ham bands does not necessarily notch out the harmonics.

Alex Pardo of Cinergy said the Internet traffic travels on a separate band wave from the electric current, so there's no interference.
He said the utility has found no problem with radio wave interference, a concern raised by many amateur radio operators.

Lets hope it's true.;)

"He said the utility has found no problem with radio wave interference, a concern raised by many amateur radio operators."

Yeah well I suppose you would believe your used car salesman when he told you that your car did not put out exhaust gasses. Dream on - I won't get into the explanation on this subject anymore except to say that an rf signal introduced to an open wire WILL Radiate. Physics 101.

So, if it doesn't emit any interference in the HAM and emergency bands then who cares.

Well the ham bands are not the only places in the hf spectrum that are being used. You have the NTIA with hundreds of government/defense frequencies in heavy usage daily, you have FEMA with plenty of hf usage, the airlines transoceanic flight system on hf, what about the regular shortwave bands? Ham radio only takes up aprox. 6% of the 1-30Mhz spectrum. I am happy to hear that they are notching out the ham bands, but they will still have plenty of complaints after wide area deployment. The noise floor will steadily increase with each deployment, and with skipzone more and more into play, it will spell doom.

you have that right on with radiation of RF over open wires and the harmonics which will follow. Honestly I am ignorant to what freqs. the async signals will utilize, but it must bring the noise floor up on HF at some point, to say otherwise would dispute everything I have experienced with RF. The providers and equipment companies will become sloppy in their work soon enough. Just like the pager industry and what it has done to vhf/uhf bands in metropolitan areas.

I knew that the did a trial in an area close to downtown, but I never heard of the results. It could be great for a lot of people who cannot get coverage out here.

puritan

I remember reading about this either here (this website) or maybe in a Cincinnati Enquirer article about this test. It was easily a year ago and they had it installed in people's homes, not vapor(hard)ware...

"It could be great for a lot of people who cannot get coverage out here."

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"Cincinnati intends to offer 1Mbps for $29.95 a month via electrical outlets"
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Cmon can't you read? Cincinnati is a large customer base to deploy in. It would not make financial sense to deploy a technology such as this in a remote area. Your chances of getting this are as good as getting another $1k tax break.
Sure the companies pushing this will tell you that you will get it in the "near future". I wish they would define "near future". It would probably be as good as "it doesn't radiate on open wires".

Please learn about this city before you spew your obviously biased opinion here. There are many places that are not far out that have no broadband options at this time because of crappy service from Adelphia and Sprint. But these are all well within Cinergy's range.

puritan

Yes well taken, and I do know that the power companies and the cable companies act in a like fashion nationwide. Out here we have Excel energy and Comcast cable who are both also looking at the possibilities of deployment here. Comcast has recently increased their cable modem service to 3Mbps in a wide area of service, so I don't know why they are looking at BPL also. Maybe to "reach more customers" who don't subscribe to cable service and are still on dial up modems with 49.9Kbps or less, usually less. Also maybe to get a "slice of the pie" along with Excel Energy who is most probably going to deploy it, but needs a network provider. The other side of the coin here is the fact that if you are within range of your power/network company and don't have broadband yet, doesn't that say alot about those companies services. I mean with "crappy service" from your network companies, just wait til you see what crappy service means when the power company gets into it too. This is what I mean that they will "act in a like fashion" nationwide. The power grid nationwide for the most part is in dire need of a rebuild. The wiring is falling apart and the power companies response to simple complaints are almost non-existant. Now you want them to deploy a complex network system on their old wiring and expect them to take care of complaints. It is the same thing nationwide and your location doesn't sound any different to me.

It will be nice to have another option here in Landen (Maineville) right now the only choice i have is Cable (Roadrunner) and the reviews on their service arent all gung ho. Cinergy plans are to introduce this option to Cinci, Northern Ky, and Eastern In. on March 15. I for one will be looking forward to it.
Dan In Landen

How come all the BPL is only around the 1mbps? I thought this was supposed to be a lot faster.

"How come all the BPL is only around the 1mbps?"

It's been around 1Mbps for the trail sites (less than 100 users), just wait until they get 1000 users or more. It will drop down below 1Mbps, probably below 500kbps. And just wait for possible ingress from licensed services, it will probably dis-connect altogether. Cheers to a great technology.

said by Stewy85:

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How come all the BPL is only around the 1mbps? I thought this was supposed to be a lot faster.

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1mbit is under VERY OPTIMAL CONDITIONS(on paper). realworld will probably around Qwest DSL (low tier) speeds(256/256 or 640/256 if theyre lucky)

Did anybody see that story about 50 mbps in 2 years from cable providers. i know the cable systems are very robust but damn.. i think we are just hit the tip of the ice berg.

IIRC, DOCSIS can already do 45MBps. The limitation with current cable providers isn't a technological one.

said by Theyll do it:

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Did anybody see that story about 50 mbps in 2 years from cable providers. i know the cable systems are very robust but damn.. i think we are just hit the tip of the ice berg.

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The raw bandwidth of coaxial cable is 1 or 1.5 Ghz...the "real" (conducted) bandwidth of an unshielded powerline is what.. 300 kHz (kilohertz) maybe ? BPL is unscalable Dark Ages technology.

said by rf_engineer:

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The raw bandwidth of coaxial cable is 1 or 1.5 Ghz...the "real" (conducted) bandwidth of an unshielded powerline is what.. 300 kHz (kilohertz) maybe ? BPL is unscalable Dark Ages technology.

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Well then nobody will buy and the whole thing will be a big bust and hams will be in hog heaven.

said by downstreamer:

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said by rf_engineer:

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The raw bandwidth of coaxial cable is 1 or 1.5 Ghz...the "real" (conducted) bandwidth of an unshielded powerline is what.. 300 kHz (kilohertz) maybe ? BPL is unscalable Dark Ages technology.

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Well then nobody will buy and the whole thing will be a big bust and hams will be in hog heaven.

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Well, not really. When one considers that hams are largely techies, we long for broadband just as much as many of you here. We have to deal with the same frustrations with lack of coverage. It's unfortunate that a solution like BPL has gotten this far. There's no winners in this. Investors will lose money, carriers will have to deal with failed service offerings, and people working at BPL equipment companies lose jobs. The only people that actually make out were at the FCC. It's likely a new administration will be in place when the problems are fully realized and the current administration people have moved on to private sector jobs (as lobbyists! )...

This is the first I've heard of this. I need to get my head out from under Cincinnati Bell's rock.

When I saw this and submitted it I was suprised it existed here in the area. I had heard nothing about it until I read the article.

I for one am happy to see it. I live in NKY and next year it will start to be rolled out there. That will give me 3 choices for Broadband and hopefully competitive pricing.

Cincinnati Bells 3Mb Zoomtown has thus far been a bust for me. Signed up for 3Mb and am lucky to get 1Mb right now. I believe they have plans to install R/D and Residential gateways to extend the higher speeds to more customers but maybe they started touting it early to capitalize on Insight Broadbands speed decreases in Northern Ky. So for me the 1Mb up and down would be on par with The DSL speeds I am getting. But the speeds are no where near the 3+ Mb down I was getting from Insight. To bad they have cut my outbound speed to 15k from the previous 80-100 k I used to enjoy.

I guess you're not in the right circles

This is kind of off topic but how come no companies are not blending technologies to deliver broadband across the last miles? Like a cable company might erect a mini tower that uses satellites rf, or fixed wireless systems to broadcast from its final terrestrial reaching points to extend its deployment areas? I mean I am all for Broadband over powerlines if it can get me broadband (since I am stuck on dial) But since its seeming to piss off the hammies - wouldnt it just be easier to combine some of our existing technologies to solve these kinds of problems vs struggling with trying to develop and deploy new solutions?

Not that I'm biased for one way or the other, but would someone, ANYONE, please cite actual interference problems with the rollouts of some of the BPL I've seen reported here in the last few months.

All I hear are "doom and gloom" posts. How come if some of these cities are rolling it out, I'm not hearing about massive RF outages in these areas attributed to BPL systems?

The rollout areas are what now? Ohio and North Carolina? Correct? Anyone from these areas hearing about major RF interference, or is this just Chicken Little saying the sky is falling?

Again, I'm just trying to convey what I've seen as comments to these BPL rollouts, and what I'm not hearing about as the rollouts are being done. I've seen the ARRL website about what they've seen, but I've seen no other source, can someone come through with that?

Certainly... here's a page with links to a lot of studies done by the ARRL labs.

»www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/

That's not what you could hardly call an "objective" site. Are there any unbiased reports of wide-spread problems?

said by bolt:

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That's not what you could hardly call an "objective" site. Are there any unbiased reports of wide-spread problems?

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While the ARRL has a vested interest in stopping BPL, much of the webpage is a portal to other organizations with reports of problems. I suggest following some of the links to studies in other countries. As I've mentioned earlier, BPL has been tested in other countries and is a relative late comer to the US.

I'd also recommend reading the FCC Notice of Inquiry filings here »www.arrl.org/~ehare/bpl/ ··· nks.html . While this is also ARRL page, it links to all significant filings, both for and against BPL. The NOI filings are also directly available for viewing on the FCC ECBS website, the URL above just links to these.

Seems reading the article sheds a little light..

Shark said the only commercial deployment of BPL now is in Manassas, Va., where the municipality has teamed with a New York investment firm to market the capability to about 15,000 homes

However, my question still stands... Is there massive issues with RF now in the Manassas area?

Where are all of the police, fire, EMS, commerical, and other private radio users complaining of interference in these areas? Surely someone would have come forward by now if there were really interference issues that would actually effect someone.

It looks like the sky isn't falling after all just like a lot of us have said from the start.

I love this BPL stuff. Keep it coming!

They could make a killing if they could get it out to the rural community's

[joke] The FCC and NTIA band plan for BPL...

»www.qrpis.org/~k3ng/fcc_ ··· ree.html

im certain the ol country boy that has a 28.8kps modem would kill for this since hes in the middle of nowhere and theres nothing around to do

I currently have zoomtown and I get around 600/400! with those kind of rip off speeds I am happy for BPL to come around. For those who would suggest cable internet, just know that there is a kid the local area that sucks up the bandwith and my neighbors have to use my wifi. lol