spaceace,Not a new story, and will take a while to see how it...

spaceace,
Not a new story, and will take a while to see how it plays out.

Last I heard about BPL in Australia was that Communications Authority had it on hold due to interference with emergency radio communications for military, police, etc. Dont remember all the details now as I read it a while ago.

Japan similarly has it on hold, Singapore abandoned a trial a year or so ago, several trials have been started with much fanfare and quietly dropped from time to time.
Europe seems to have some implimentations, one succesful one I read about is in Scotland somewhere. (Scottish-hydro I think)

It seems there is new recent enthusiasum to try it in the US, and have to wait to see how it plays out as it seems that the HAM radio operators are up in arms over it.

In general, the power lines are not shielded, they are also not twisted pair so that they form an antenna, also not optimised for the high frequency signal for BPL.

It depdends of course on the implimentation, but the BPL signal has to be hard-wired through transformers also.

Overall, while possible, it does not seem to be the a well accepted method for providing broadband even though the concept is very appealing.

It has been a while since I looked at the details, so I could be corrected on some of the items above.

If you have ever tried the homeplug stuff (ethernet over powerlines, which is different standard to the BPL) you will know how unreliable it can be trying to send data over the powerlines.. If you have an arc-welder working down the street, all of a sudden you cannot connect tou your printer etc...