Is there a hope for us? BPL

slowlydownwards

http://tgdaily.com/content/view/43447/103

You've probably been reading about this a decade ago, so finally it seems to be materialising in some sort of form. There could be a hope for us after all.

Please be kind if you are replying to this post and avoid words such as "3G" or "satellite", or even "fibre optics". We all know that the industrious people of the country of the rising sun are (and will for a long time be) sole priviledged benefactors of that technology.

Sponge Bob

Too many side effects from BPL, it has been a sort of holy grail for over 10 years already and they cannot sort the interference issues .

So that would be a no from me (again) . It may work cleanly where the cables are entirely underground and shielded .

watty

BPL is a fail.

• Easily disrupted by Mobile Radio
• Error rate high or disrupted by solar interference
• Disrupted by any minor insulator or electrical faults
• Causes a lot of interference
• Poor range.
• Slow. (The 100Mbps is maximum shared speed on short lines, real per user speeds are easily at Narrowband/Midband speeds)

The Speed vs distance graph is much worse than a phone line, and the speed is shared as electricity is a shared line, unlike phone which is per person. This means on a 3km line from substation you get an average throughput of about 1Mbps to 3Mbps. That, unlike entry level DSL, is shared. So with 100 users online in an estate you may get dialup speeds, though 200kbps might be typical.

Thus even if the "interference" issues can be solved (and in 15 years they have not yet made any progress on that at all) the top shared speed of 100Mbps is too low to give even entry level 1Mbps DSL speeds on a typical cable network. LTE will outperform it, and in some cases even EDGE or 3G can out perform it (Rural and large estates)

There are even serious questions about interference and regulation of some Homeplug networking over home wiring.

Fibre
Adding fibre to main power distribution is easily done.
Adding local overhead fibre is easily done.
FTTC* for every home could cost less than 1/2 eircom's debts and is potentially 50x to 1,000x the speed of BPL.

(*Or HFC as UPC is doing, probably 120Mbps in some cable areas by 2010)

slowlydownwards

Square pants + mod, thanks for elaborating. Suppose, if it was any good good in the first place, it would had been developed earlier. Looking at your post, it seems like another tech that will be ignored by the end users.
And I'm with you 110% on the FTTH issue. Super fast, impervious to interferences, future proof, proven to work (well, in Japan anyhow) and cost vs benefits ratio would greatly justify it.
HOWEVER, your reasoning "getting this is only a fractional price for eircom" is too optimistic. It costs them very, very, very little to enable rural excahnges for ADSL around the counrty and they are still not doing it (or doing it at a snail pace). Besides that bunch of incompetent teachers and failed solicitors that made themselves into TD's and eventually ministers are pushing hard for 3g to shut us up. Even when it works perfectly 10-15gb/month is pitiful.
I'd pay up (happilly!!) a chunky monthly charge for unmetered and fast FTTH connection, but what chance do I have not living in Dub metrpolitan area??

Dardania

The main application of this technology will probably be for remote "smart" electricity metering type applications, currently that's done by either someone calling to your house to read usage numbers/you typing them into a telephone IVR, or if you have a 15 minute meter (usually only above a certain threshold eg current transform or buying at MV) it sends its info back to the ESB via GPRS (obviously incurring rental costs witha GSM provider)

This BPL will probably allow the utility companies to interrogate your meter using their own network, adivse your meter of current cost per kWH etc, but as we shift towards electrical netwroks that have variable power supplies that can affect power factor (eg wind) or variable power loads (eg smart appliances that can be "asked" to load shed for a while) BPL will give utilities a control channel to communicate with these devices. I'd say that TCP/IP will be used in this control channel because it is so ubiquitous...

As for offering consumer braodband over it? Perhaps, if they have a similar network topology to cable broadband at the moment (eg in cable you have fibre to a local distribution cabinet, which then connects for the last mile over coax, in the BPL scenario, fibre to the LV side of the transformer, then connects over the last mile of SWA) however as Watty & Sponge Bob say, interference... Particularly as BPL would mainly be intended for areas where there is no alternative (Rural areas so) and the length of LV cable run could be massive, adding to potential for interference...) I'd euqate its eventual data capaicty with ISDN D channel!

watty

Yes, it's about feasible to have a shared 100kbps or less purely for 300bps per meter signalling.

That's believable. Broadband isn't. Rural would have less shared users but often poorer line characteristics. Fixed Wireless can cheaply give real Broadband to Rural over 25km from a mast at 8Mbps down.


Nearly 13km from Mast.

@slowlydownwards
I think you misread what I said about eircom. Some people have suggested buying back eircom to the State. Simply ignoring eircom and doining a new from scratch FTTC network for every house in Ireland is much cheaper! eircom has been asset stripped and laden with debts form leveraged buyouts etc. The last two sets of "investors" infact are the reverse. eircom now owes of €4Billion, and little of that was due to borrowing for infrastructure, but so called investors borrowing money to take over eirom and then transferring their debt to eircom's books. Eircell was stripped (sold). Money was later spent acquiring Meteor, eircom now cannibalising the fixed line business selling eircom branded Meteor Mobile voice & Data packages. Meteor is for sale. eircom is also for sale.

see also http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055619459

slowlydownwards

Fixed wireless is great, provided there's a clear line of sight. Rather than misreading about eircom, I was simply not familiar how malignant eircom takeovers were. Was always wandering where did all that debt come from, so this explains it succinctly. Thanks for breaking it down.

Your proposal for FTTC is very rational, cost-effective and technologically superior. Let me stand behind you on that one with a huge banner. But how do we reach out to those who can actually make this happen? NBS deal with Three seems like a sealed, done and dusted deal. All it does, like you said in another post, is expanding and upgading their own mobile infrastructure network. You would love to make their eyes open and scrap that deal now, rather than in five years when they realise how it was a mistake and that something better (fibre!!) will need to be implemeted.

Rather than starting a new post, can I enquire about the possibility of using the freed up spectrum once the digital TV takes over. Heard proposals that it could be used for broadband, but no mention of it on our shores. Is there any rumors about it, and would it be applicable?

watty

Yes, thats what the "digital dividend" is, Governments making lots of money selling off 800MHz for Data. There is a sort of pan European plan. Sadly it's not co-ordinated with the reselling of 420MHz and 872MHz across Europe in the last few years or the expiry of GSM licences in 880MHz to 960MHz band in a couple of years to 5 years.

If we only use DTT for Irish TV and scrap 2 of the 3 PayTV mux, then we can have twice the spectrum for data. 2 Mux now and 4 to 5 after Analogue Switch off is sufficient for HD TV as well as SD TV. Over 70% of people have Pay TV and all the main UK channels are free on Satellite.

If the Regulator goes fro the most money, then there will be 4 to 6 LTE Mobile operators on 800MHz, each with too little spectrum for decent speed services. To get decent speeds you need to have one Infrastructure operartor, or if we scrap PayTV on DTTV (which would go bust anyway) then you could have one fixed and one Mobile Data operator with better than basic DSL on fixed wireless, but only typically 1Mbps on average (many people with 250kbps) on Mobile LTE. ANY Mobile system has inherenty 1/10th to 1/20th the speed (or less) of Fixed Wireless at the same customer and Mast density.