Broadband over power cables?

BigEejit

I was farting around and saw the following page at the Register Basically its about a test going on in Scotland for broadband using the power cables going into peoples houses .. .. now I know that ESB has spent serious cash putting down fiber all over the country ... what are the chances of this happening in Ireland??? .. wouldnt it be marvellous to circumvent Eircon and not have to put up a dish or aerial ....

MDR

ESB looked at it for a lonnnnnggggg time, and eventually decided that since they couldn't keep the amount power being fed to houses constant, they ditched the plan ...

crawler

Sadly it's a "no" for Ireland on this.......lots of reasons including the interference caused by data over lekky to other systems etc...also too many problems within the national grid to ensure constant data streams...pity. Lots of Companies have ditched this along with lots of telco manufacturers:(

spongebob

....as you said

also too many problems within the national grid to ensure constant data streams

the data is broken out of backhaul fibre at the nearby 38Kv substation and not pumped across the national grid mixed up with lekky at 2-400Kv

M

ozpass

I worked in a school in Manchester a couple of years ago installing a network. They had been included by Norweb in a limited trial of a product they were considering called (imaginatively) NorWEB.

The system was great, it flew along at between 200 - 400 Kbps consistently, unproxied. It was extremely reliable too.

The reason that they canned the system (in this instance) was that it interfered (somehow- I'm no expert) with the radio frequencies used by the emergency services (Ambulances in particular).

Scruff

if i remember correctly..
there was a problem with the street lighting poles actually acting as giant arials for the frequency they were using so the whole town where they were trialing it just got drowned out on that frequency and the interference was manic.

spongebob

It was the Norweb one I was thinking of. The data came and went fine but was broadcast from the lcoal street lights as a by product. It was a much lower frequency than Ambulances use.

It played pure puck with the British Spying Industry and was closed down. The BBC and CAA were also affected.

It is now being tested again in areas of Scotland with.....wait for it....NO street lights....actually the problem was with HID capacitors in the street lights. These are found in yards all over, being common security space lights.

Until it finally WORKS properly I will register This Domain in protest and will invite submissions on the topic early next week.


M

bricks

Then tell people about it before some one gets in there first and registers electricitysucks.com.

morgana

One of the electricity companies (I think RWE) in Germany trialled it for some time but the whole concept was finally abandoned earlier this year as being too frought with problems (interference etc.) to be viable.

BigEejit

What a pity ... it looked like just the job for people who arent close enough for DSL ... but there was one little comment in the Register article ...
SSE's Lole said regulatory issues still exist but equipment has become "quieter" and lessons have been learned about how to install the equipment so it is less noisy.
Hopefully they can give this a shot in the arm ... if they could overcome the technology issues then it could be Broadband for the masses ..