Broadband via electricity lines!

124124

This is interesting. Only if our authorities realise that Scotland is not in some other planet, but just miles away! Its time to get rid of their 'rattitude'!!

From BBC News:

Broadband goes electric

Fast net services in the UK could soon be available via electricity lines as an alternative way of reaching out to those communities cut off from broadband.

Scottish Hydro-Electric is planning to extend broadband trials to a town in Scotland and one in southern England reports Computing magazine.

Eventually the service could be available to all 3.5 million of its customers.

The company has already run technical trials of the technology in the small Scottish towns of Campbeltown and Crief.

Reaching out

The trials were a big success, offering up to 2mb per second - twice as fast as most broadband services on offer in the UK - for the price of £25.

Speed and price of any commercial service has yet to be decided but the firm says it will be competitive.

And there is no reason why other power companies could not follow suit, said a spokesman for the power company.

It could be a welcome alternative for people living outside of the reach of current broadband services.

"Technically we can reach to a lot more remote spots than BT can offer but some very remote areas will still be difficult," said the spokesman.

ednwireland

not before time alternative copper wire network why not - i remeber reading about this years ago all we need is the ESB to take it up now

bk

Come on ESB, show some innovation and let us make use of your new Fibre ring (when I say this I mean by also offering us last mile technology).

MDR

The ESB looked at this technology for a very long time and eventually rejected it. I am not sure why.

Bard

Originally posted by MDR
The ESB looked at this technology for a very long time and eventually rejected it. I am not sure why.

ESB Launches Broadband Fibre Optic Network

excerpt from article:
The Fibre Optic network will be completed by the Autumn of this year providing broadband access in a figure of eight around the country from Buncrana in Co Donegal to Cork.

The network consists of 48 fibres (24 pairs, each pair capable of delivering 2.5GB.) wrapped around the ESB's high voltage network. This is one of the quickest and most cost effective ways of delivering a fibre optic network. The technology has been used extensively in Europe and has proven to be up to 10 times more reliable than equivalent underground networks.

ESB telecoms will operate as "a carriers carrier" providing a number of access packages for telecommunications companies and other businesses requiring broadband access.

The ESB network is the first service to offer a uniform bandwidth across the country.

sutty

aye they did. I seam to remember them saying that the cabling used to carry our power was of to high a resistance and that it melted the cables/rubber outting on the when they would try it.

MDR

We are talking about broadband delivery into peoples homes over electricity lines, last miles rather backhaul infrastructure.

124124

'rattitude' may be?

but it sure is a great way to get broadband all over the country, even to the remotest areas, as long as its connected by electricity lines.

SkepticOne

Different technology in that ENN article, Bard. However, with this new fibre backbone, the idea of extending it to the home via the mains line might become more attractive.

Bard

Originally posted by SkepticOne
Different technology in that ENN article, Bard. However, with this new fibre backbone, the idea of extending it to the home via the mains line might become more attractive.

Minor point... That wasn't an ENN article. This is.

124124

I dont think Scottish Power is talking about sending data over fibre optic cables, wrapped around elctricity lines.

I was under the impression that they were to use the same medium for both!

err., was that too stupid?

thegills

ESBT are looking at wrapping fibre around their 38Kv network which could mean that they could get fibre into most towns.

As a final year project some lads sent data about 10feet over the 220v mains.

But realistically how would you seperate the data signals from each house considering the house don't have seperate ESB cables back to the sub-stations.

SkepticOne

Originally posted by thegills
But realistically how would you seperate the data signals from each house considering the house don't have seperate ESB cables back to the sub-stations.

It would have to be a shared pipe to a certain extent. For privacy, you could run multiple VPNs etc if that was needed.

longword

Originally posted by thegills
But realistically how would you seperate the data signals from each house considering the house don't have seperate ESB cables back to the sub-stations.

That's the beauty of it. You don't have to. Same as cable modems. Everyone shares the same bandwidth.

Lemming

I seem to recall why the ESB and Nortel (??) rejected the idea of broadband via electricty owing to something along the lines of inadequate shielding, cross-over, and ability to distinguish where to deliver information.

or some such. I could be mistaken, and I am going on vague memories.

124124

Well, it shouldn’t be as difficult as it sounds. All they would need is a modem, a proper modem that is one with some sort of encryption in it.

Well, I personally don’t think this is such a bad idea, and especially since Scottish Power has proven that its a commercially viable solution.

In the changed environment (better-broadband-aware govt, public and businesses now), I think esb should reconsider their test and decision.

Hornet

Powerline has been launched in Germany a number of years ago.

The power companies that were involved initially are MVV, EnBW, RWE and E.ON.

RWE and E.ON terminated the project because the take up was not high enough and because they had issues with the modems. Their supplier was ASCOM, who discontinued their Powerline product line just recently (31/01/03). see Press Release

MVV and EnBW are still active. You find some information about MVV's services here http://www.vype.de/ (in German) and about a technology partner here http://www.ppc-ag.de (in German). If your left over's from school years aren't enough to read the German on these pages, have a look at http://www.mainnet-plc.com/, it is the web site of another technology partner from Israel with an English language web site.

Powerline is a shared service with a max of 2 Mbit/s.

EnBW is currently connecting 160 schools in Dusseldorf via Powerline for a total project cost of EUR 2.6 mio.

MVV has approx. 2000 customers in Mannheim connected with an upper limit of "connectable" customers of 45,000. It is planned to make the service available to 125,000 end users in Mannheim by the end of 2003.

OHP

The ESB National Fibre Optic Network backbone planned will include the following:

Clare-Galway: 163kms.
Roscommon-Sligo-Leitrim: 230kms.
Donegal-Meath-Louth-Monaghan-Cavan: 159kms.
Donegal: 129kms.
Shannon-CityWest, Dublin: 193kms.
Dublin-Waterford: 191kms.
Waterford-Cork-Limerick: 172kms.

The network will be installed in a figure-of-eight crossing the country as this provides excellent resilience. The network consists of cables made of 48 separate fibres, each with two-and-a-half gigabits of connectivity. The new fibre cabling is wrapped around the existing power lines using techology developed by AFL Focas.

I can't find AFL Focas just now to see exactly what sorth of Cable it is but it would be interesting to see if anyone finds a link to it.


OHP

thegills

Single mode, G.652

zynaps

Originally posted by thegills
But realistically how would you seperate the data signals from each house considering the house don't have seperate ESB cables back to the sub-stations.

I think after any signal attenuation caused between circuit breakers (or whatever...) between houses, there is also the fact that all the data travelling around your own network (wall sockets being a point of access, I guess) is encrypted and should look like noise to anyone else.

The technology is supposedly adaptive and selects carriers where there is an acceptable lack of noise at any given time, so it should be compatible and resilient enough to work for two houses right beside each other without your porn leaking into their pc accidentally.

I asked ESB about this just before Christmas, they sent me some blurb, so I asked them some more specific questions, to which I never got a reply. Don't really see why they wouldn't go for the idea though... that said, I don't have a clue about how ESB operates or what they'd have to do to get the bandwidth to our front doors, or wall boxes or whatever...

zynaps

Balfa

124124, it's not exactly just as simple as getting a modem
(and Scottish Hydro-Electric haven't proven its commercial viability, considering all they're doing at the moment is technology trials)


Although it is basically a very simple thing to implement. All transmission signals, be they radio or television or telephone, or whatever, are done the same way as it would be done over power lines, by modulating the signal onto a "carrier", which in this case would be the 50Hz AC coming into your house. Granted 230V is a lot higher than that of a phoneline (i think typically 1.2v? someone correct me), but in theory this should actually make it easier to modulate a signal onto it.

With regards to the security issues, it's exactly the same as any other broadcast network, such as cablemodem or wireless wan.

And with regards to a noisey signal, this isn't normally a problem, although if you're running some heavy load equipment such as a hoover, dryer or some power tools, the signal can become disturbed, but this is very easily solved by sticking a filter on the power outlet that your broadband comes from, in the same way as filters clear the signal for X10 devices.

All this applies, of course, only for the supposed "last mile" of the power grid, because i have no idea what way ESB transmits power over the backbone grid, but that won't really matter in ESB's case, because they can use their last mile for ditribution, and their snazzy new fibre network (which is completely unrelated and totally off topic ;P) for the backbone.

tribble

Granted 230V is a lot higher than that of a phoneline (i think typically 1.2v? someone correct me)

ok then - standard eircom lines operate at around 50V dc

whip out your multimeter and have a look.
To filter the dc out simply put a 60v (to be sure, to be sure) capacitor in line it will leave the ac voice signal for you to play with.

tribble:)

zynaps

Originally posted by Balfa
And with regards to a noisey signal, this isn't normally a problem, although if you're running some heavy load equipment such as a hoover, dryer or some power tools, the signal can become disturbed, but this is very easily solved by sticking a filter on the power outlet that your broadband comes from, in the same way as filters clear the signal for X10 devices.

The implementiation I read about automatically senses for frequencies that are 'impaired' at any given moment and uses other frequences, thereby getting around things like noise from your fridge turning on or halogen lighting etc., although it would mean the data rate would change depending on the number of working carriers it could find at that moment...

Unlike the delimiters, the payload portion of the packet is intended only for the destination receiver. Payload data is carried only on a set of carriers that have been previously agreed upon by the transmitter and intended receiver during a channel adaptation procedure.

Because only carriers in the "good" part of the channel transfer function are used, it is not necessary to use such heavy error correcting coding as is required for transmissions intended for all receivers.

...

The adaptation has three degrees of freedom:

• De-selection of carriers at badly impaired frequencies
• Selection of modulation on individual carriers (DBPSK or DQPSK)
• Selection of convolutional code rate (1*2 or 3*4).

From here, an article written by a group called homeplug.

zynaps

ozpass

I had always thought that the major obstacle to implementing this technology was the radio interference it caused (with lamp-posts acting as antennae). This was certainly the nail-in-the-coffin for a similar pilot in Manchester a few years back, although Norweb still honour their connections to some schools in Didsbury (South Manchester).

zynaps

Well, I don't understand how they would robustly transmit data over power lines outside of the home - all I've read has been focused on house-wide network stuff, not specifying how the internet gets to the house... but apparently only high-tension electricity lines give reliable transmission, with ordinary wiring it seems to be more of a challenge.
So I dunno...

That lamppost thing sounds like a bit of an old wives tale though...

zynaps

ozpass

That lamppost thing sounds like a bit of an old wives tale though...

Actually it's legit....or was a few years ago! NorWEB's setup was interfering specifically on frequencies used by the emergency services (ambulances I seem to recall) leading to the plan being scrapped.

thegills

put a 60v (to be sure, to be sure) capacitor in line

It's been a while since I left college, but are capacitors not measured in Farads??

longword

Originally posted by thegills
It's been a while since I left college, but are capacitors not measured in Farads??

Capacitance is measured in Farads. Capacitors are rated by capacitance, maximum voltage, maximum temperature, and tolerance.