Wellllllll... isn't portraying this as "BPL" (sense we use it in, of late, implying a service delivered over a large, geographically distributed outside plant) a little stretched? BPL in a localized scenario like that isn't really BPL. It's (for want of a better term) LAN over power lines, really. Accesses the gateway, and then is transmitted to the WAN as conventional broadband. If there is any place for BPL, that might be it... but it still miffs me. Why, with fiber and all of the cutting edge technologies out there, and with current broadband technology being the prime example of the "shelf life of a ripe banana" metaphor of obsolescence we have going, right now, would anybody want a technology from the sixties in a new install? Cost savings? Retrofitting is going to be a killer, within a decade or so, when real FTTP is a reality in some areas. Mostly in the kind of urban areas Trump owns properties in...
It's not a killer app. And it works, in the scenario painted, assuming it's well enough engineered. There's nothing "revolutionary" about THIS application. Using the power lines for
local area networking was even a brief fad in the consumer arena, not that long ago. It's networking in a white box with black type that says, "generic LAN, suitable for everyday use, some settling may occur during shipping..." The typical building has a limited electrical infrastructure. You can bridge transformers and so forth, filter loads for interference, and all that rather easily. It's when you try distributing it over the "outside plant" power company infrastructures you run into big, nasty problems drooling at you through the trees.
So -- sure. It'll work, in that limited scenario... probably. Most of the time, anyway, and at very least adequately for current demands. But what happens in ten years? Who'll even want it? If I have a nice new fiber feed right down the last mile and straight to my gateway, why do I want a severely limited analog technology delivering the last yard? Of course, maybe Donald's crazy like the proverbial fox. Figuring that this will eliminate cat5 costs in his properties, simplify wiring, and let him adopt the best and lowest cost technology
when the technology's mature, and costs and performance are stable and established.
Put it this way. If I build a new home, I probably would try and provide for easy retrofit wiring down the road, but I don't want to spend a fortune on pure fiber inside wiring, right now, for a technology that hasn't established a track record, and that I don't have, yet. I'll wait, and when I see how technology's developed, I'll buy my plant when I have the tech to use it on. For now, I'll use a minimalist cat5 traditional network, knowing it's being obsolesced as I type, but that it's got a lot of good years, for basic 100btx and broadband delivery.
Don't know where he's coming from, or what he's factoring in, but assuming he's talking doing it as strictly inside plant in a building, it should work passably well. It already has, for years.
Again, I reiterate my traditional aside on BPL, it's neither new nor is it revolutionary. It's been developed and usable as a general concept for almost forty years. It's getting around the inherent limitations that's a challenge. But do we want to set the precedent of pouring billions into patching the hull of a leaky garbage scow so it can double as a supertanker, when we already have beautiful, seaworthy supertankers, and new ones already in the shipyard under construction that will very likely obsolesce the existing ones in around a decade, instead of pouring those billions into the new technology and getting IT to the people who need it, instead of getting them (as under served markets typically and traditionally get) a quick fix chewing gum and string solution?
In this case, though, you
won't find me ranting, as I've been known to, on the waste and impracticality of BPL... not because my mind's changed, now... but because it's a different scenario, one that's suited to the technology. As I noted, current broadband tech is around as stable as wet quicksand, right now. It's changing on a daily basis, and DSL/cable as we know it's probably bound for obsolescence as soon as serious progress is made in FTTP. Hell, soon as fiber
to the neighborhood is widely established, I predict we'll possibly be looking at vDSL as a real normative technology... and when we have the last mile done, it'll be entirely possible to wire the premises in fiber, and get the full punch end to end ATM over fiber can deliver.
... but that all might change, if somebody develops something even better, while I'm sleeping, tonight.
XPL (anything over power lines) is yesterday's tech being cleaned up, shaven and sobered up for today's demands. It already has a place, for local intercoms, even broadband-only LOCAL networks, low demand remote control and monitoring apps, things along those lines... it really strikes me as the niche for developers with great engineering skills and credentials, but a really poor sense of vision and creativity and a shortage of original ideas, to get into.
The engineer with a lot of vision and creativity, if you ask me, is looking at fiber and beyond, pure ATM networking, and taking into account that broadband bandwidth demand is expanding in geometric leaps. Almost everybody not using dialup... now, think about it... here has
at least what used to be a fractional T-1. Some of us have close to the bandwidth equivalent of a T-3 in our homes. And everybody clamors for more, as they start getting interested in online gaming, VOIP, streaming media... and connecting more users to the gateway. I'm going on a bit, now, though... so... hmmm... catchy ending to sum it all up... hmmm... OK, got it:
"We need to be acting in 2005, but thinking in 2015, not in 1988."