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Print E-mail del.icio.us 21 comment(s) - last by noirsoft.. on May 17 at 2:15 AM

Competition in the broadband industry means faster speeds and lower costs for consumers

According to several announcements, Cable Internet access is getting the boost it needs. Most recently, Comcast announced that a new cable modem technology was in the works and would give customers speeds of up to 150 megabits per second (Mbps). Analysts say that Comcast's cable modem development is due largely to competition from fiber to the premises (FTTP) technologies such as Verizon's Fiber Optics Service (FiOS).

This week DirecTV made the announcement that it too will give cable technology a run for its money. The satellite television provider told reporters that it plans to provide broadband Internet access by delivering the service through power lines.
 
Chief executive officer of DirecTV Chase Carey says that DirecTV is working with companies that specialize in delivering broadband access through a city's power grid.

"We're not the only ones talking to them. I think you'll see some meaningful tests in this arena. We think it would be a good thing to have a third, a fourth or a fifth entrant in broadband and if we can be helpful in pushing that forward and if there's an opportunity for us to intelligently invest in doing so, we would," Carey said.

Liberty Media Holding Corp., a founding shareholder in Current Group, a provider of power line broadband, will assume majority of control later this year of DirecTV from News Corp. DirecTV says that it WiMax technology is also in consideration as a way to deliver broadband access.



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Hmm
By bighairycamel on 5/16/2007 3:33:40 PM , Rating: 3
I remember reading about this several years ago, but have yet to hear about typical speed expectencies. Anyone know?

If this competes with cable speeds, hopefully we see some competition inspired price drops. This should be good for the consumer.




RE: Hmm
By Miercoles on 5/16/2007 3:43:35 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah i also do recall reading about this quite a while ago, and if i remember correctly their speeds were somewhat disappointing when compared against other high speed options at the time.
Anyways things have changed during these past two years, and who knows what their standards are nowadays.


RE: Hmm
By TomZ on 5/16/07, Rating: -1
RE: Hmm
By FITCamaro on 5/16/2007 5:11:59 PM , Rating: 1
Have any factual reason for saying that? An electrical signal is an electrical signal. The biggest hurdle with transmitting data over a power line is getting around the noise in the line.


RE: Hmm
By LatinMessiah on 5/16/2007 5:44:24 PM , Rating: 1
Yeah, where's the beef?


RE: Hmm
By TomZ on 5/16/07, Rating: 0
RE: Hmm
By Oregonian2 on 5/16/2007 9:46:41 PM , Rating: 2
P.S. - Also that's why it carry as high of a data rate. Doesn't have purposefully made controlled impedance lines. All made for 60 Hz.


RE: Hmm
By Oregonian2 on 5/16/2007 9:45:00 PM , Rating: 2
Also it can put out noise crap as well. Power lines are made for 50/60 Hz, not made with nice tight twisted pairs made to contain radiation at frequencies associated with data communications (other than low level signaling at 60hz sorts of rates). So radios can be filled with a lot of trash coming from the power lines when carrying data.


RE: Hmm
By OddTSi on 5/16/2007 5:13:36 PM , Rating: 2
People from trial areas around the country have been saying they get 10Mbps SYMMETRICAL. If those turn out to be standard speeds once the networks start going commercial they can definately count on me as a customer as long as it's not too expensive.


Anyone else remember DirecTV DSL?
By RamarC on 5/16/2007 3:39:18 PM , Rating: 2
They offered one of the best customer experiences that I can remember. Trouble-free installation/operation, good service, and a good price. I expect the same if they launch a power-line network.

I was truly disappointed when they exited the DSL business since it forced me to switch to Verizon. Verizon was so brain-dead that they said my address wasn't eligible for DSL even though I was actively using DSL at the time!




By Mitch101 on 5/16/2007 3:49:30 PM , Rating: 2
Verizon did the same with me saying I was to far from the CO but they were measuring me from the wrong CO. I was 18,000 from the one at the time when 15,000 was the limit but I was 12,000 from another CO but they would never measure me from that one. Luckily cable came in a few months later.


By llamaboy on 5/17/2007 2:04:37 AM , Rating: 2
Glad to hear you liked the service, I used to work for them before they shutdown our department. We really tried to emphasis customer satisfaction over anything else, which is the exactly opposite treatment you seem to experience with other ISPs.


By noirsoft on 5/17/2007 2:15:10 AM , Rating: 2
Chalk up another happy former DirecTV DSL customer. When they went under, I was told that I would be getting "identical" service from Earthlink. Except it wasn't. DirecTV DSL was a real DSL, whereas EarthLink was PPPoE, which is and always has been unreliable. I would get disconnects requiring a reboot of the modem about twice a week. And I was locked into a one-year contract.

Luckily, I found a local, independent DSL provider. Still PPPoE, but I drop less than once a month now.


Verizon
By sixth on 5/16/2007 3:55:30 PM , Rating: 2
I really hope they get this live. I am dealing with the same crap that verizon is saying I am to far from the CO. I am like 20,000 feet. I might have to call the engineering team back and make sure they are measuring me from the right CO. My whole entire townhouse development get the same line of crap, it sucks. I am going to try the BFFR route and try to get 25 people signed up for service and have verizon come and put in another CO for us to get DSL. I have cable now and it is HORRIBLE. download caps, and horrible service. I would LOVE to see this even its only a 3MB line...




RE: Verizon
By cheesecurd on 5/16/2007 10:41:18 PM , Rating: 2
Rest assured they are. Unless they don't have the records on your service and you are getting free service because they have overlooked you, its unlikely bordering on impossible they are measuring from the wrong CO. There is one, and only one, CO that can provide service to your home. DSL service is highly profitable for a phone company. I'm a senior telecom engineer for a phone company, trust me we WANT as many people as possible to subscribe to DSL :)


Speeds
By HrilL on 5/16/2007 5:47:18 PM , Rating: 2
I was reading on wikipedia and this is what I found
Consumer Electronics Powerline Communications Alliance (CEPCA) (Sony, Mitsubishi and Panasonic) is developing powerline technologies which can offer speeds up to 170 Mbit/s.

So this could be just as good as cable is going to be soon.




RE: Speeds
By jkresh on 5/16/2007 9:13:18 PM , Rating: 2
Pretty sure that CEPCA is for home networking (ie it competes with wifi not with DSL/CABLE or 802.16).


No what you think
By krotchy on 5/17/2007 12:33:08 AM , Rating: 4
Well, I figure I will chime in here, though I am fairly late. I was in on the ISART conference about broadband over power lines. The top researchers in the field were there to discuss this specification. Here were the problems.

1. Power Lines = Giant Antennas, so whatever frequencies are used, they cant emanate to take over amateur radio channels.

2. Power Lines dont have the bandwidth of coaxial cables, not even close. The actual working bandwidth is quite low.

3. The signal cannot pass through any transformer anywhere, so all transformers need a passthrough repeater of some sort around the transformer.

4. Creating prices and bandwidth comparable to cable/dsl is a virtual impossibility.

The only real use that was determined likely to be implemented is using BOPL to interact with status monitors all over the power grid to monitor usage characteristics and better diagnose blackouts and whatnot.

Overall for consumer uses the picture was "bleak at best".




failed tech
By bubbacub616 on 5/16/2007 4:48:41 PM , Rating: 2
trialled in the UK a year or 2 ago - failed

needed lots of money at transformers to keep the signal clean and there was no way it would be anything like as cheap as broadband (apparently)

this was what I read at the time. I'm sure some of the more motivated/anal members of the community can come up with some evidence, either way i'm tired and am going to bed




By Delegator on 5/16/2007 5:26:59 PM , Rating: 2
I have seen reviews of several power line networking products over the past 3-5 years. The technology is advancing, but it has a ways to go before it is competitive with DSL and Cable.

Right now there are products that work passably well for a home network (see Maximum PC for reviews of a couple), but even those can be tripped up by house wiring that is screwy or sub-par.

I think it would be great to have another alternative for broadband access. But, the noise inherent in power transmission and the state of most power grids (which were obviously not designed for networking when they were built over the last 100 years) makes for some pretty difficult obstacles to overcome.




BPL trials
By thomp237 on 5/17/2007 12:15:10 AM , Rating: 1
BPL is not all that it is cracked up to be. If the technology gains wide acceptance it will render many of the Amateur and hobby frequency bands unusable.

This is the report from one of the trial areas - Cottonwood, AZ - http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2006/03/28/3/?nc=...

BPL in AZ has been completely abandoned. We can only hope this trend continues.




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