[geeks] Has anyone used power-line communications?

[gsm at mendelson.com]

On Sat, Jul 30, 2011 at 01:56:20PM -0500, Bob wrote:
>
>I include the last since the FCC and others have pushed this idea of
>Broadband over Power Lines  (BPL) for several years now with disasterous
>results in spite of their data massaging.

Thursday night, a meeting of the local ham radio club was held at my place,
and this was dicussed. One of the members of the club works for a company
in the US that makes BPL equipment and he had a lot to say about it.

First of all, despite what you think, BPL is not dead, it's in use all around
the world all the time. It's pretty much dead as an internet access method,
but for keeping track of power systems, remote meter reading, remote 
switching, etc. It's everywhere.

Some of the companies made products that were noisy. They long since have went
out of the business including Motorola, whose product was clean.

Second, BPL is much cleaner than DSL, but the power companies do not have
as a good a lobby as the telcos. They also don't have the ARRL against them.

This guy, who is also a ham, is Rich Hare's nemisis. :-)

On the other hand, I believe he really knows his stuff, is speaking the truth,
etc, but I'm glad BPL was not approved here, and still use my aDSL line. I 
pay for it, I have to locate my antennas 10 meters from my home, but luckily,
at least for now, I can.

Geoff.


-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM
Making your enemy reliant on software you support is the best revenge.