[geeks] Has anyone used power-line communications?

[Bob]

>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.

Nowhere did I say BPL is dead.  It was a disaster as far as internet
access.
It created interference, sometimes even into the VHF spectrum.  The
control
signals you speak of are very low frequency compared to the ones used for
internet access.  We have a gizmo on the central air that if the "power"
company needs to lower the system requirements, they can shut down my
A/C if needed.  We get a reduction in rate for having this device.  Never
have
I gotten interference from that.  BPL uses frequencies through the SW
spectrum
and those lines ain't shielded. :-)  That was problem one.  Then data
that
showed there was interference was either ignored or deleted from test
results (problem two).  Even the FCC was guilty of that.  Why do you
think
the ARRL went to court?

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

Maybe it wasn't cost effective.

>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.

We had DSL for a while but I never got interference from that either. 
Again, that
was relatively low frequencies compared to BPL, many just outside of the
audio
spectrum.

>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.

Hmmm. was the DSL interfering with the radio or the radio interfering
with
the DSL?  I had no problems here either way and my antennas were on the
house.  I usually never ran more than 100 watts out so that might not
have had
an effect.  Since the BPL signal leaked out of the power line, I always
wondered
if some ham fired up his kw, turned his beam so the power lines were in
the
line of fire, would the kid down the street have trouble playing WoW?
Never saw that addressed.

Bob