18 March 2005

Broadband over power lines in Queanbeyan

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This LinuxWorld article is about Country Energy trialling broadband internet over power lines in Queanbeyan.

This is very cool! Users have a special modem that they can plug into any power point in their building for internet access. Currently, it’s 10Mbps but they’re about to upgrade equipment for a 200Mbps trial.

The downside is possible CB and HF radio interference, which Country Energy appear to be investigating by getting an expert from the UK to do emission testing. Also, Country Energy have to install special boxes on their power line network to convert signal to something that can be transmitted over power lines, and repeaters on poles to maintain the signal – you can imagine how much work this would involve over CE’s 195,000km of lines in NSW.

But imagine how cool this would be if it worked!

There’s some discussion of this story on another Canberra blog

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ahh i didnt thnik of that JB

Spiny-Parrot8:08 pm 19 Mar 05

Frequency injection they have been using to switch electronic controls for years. If they can make money out of it, it will work. Trust me.

Andy,

I think you’ll find the 45Mbps is going to be pretty widely shared, certainly between everyone on the same junction box.

it’s damn quick now when no-one’s using it.

but wait till you’re sharing it with every porn downloader on your block and you might be less impressed.

don’t waste money ?
They have tested 45Mbps download speeds.
Thats pretty god damn fast, by any standards.
What, are you dreaming of gigabit internet to the desktop or something ? (well, maybe one day)
In the mean time, if it goes beyond trial/exploration, this could be pretty bloody cool.

Linuxworld state that they had the service piped to an organisation, and they then went up and down the street, knockin on doors, plugging in a laptop adn the special modem, and it Just Worked.
doesn’t need telstra to configure something at an exchange, no 10 day turn around.

BPL is an interim technology at best. In OZ we dont have true broadband speeds, just what telstra think we think is broadband.

Dont waste your money with BPL.

Ralph: My understanding is that power filtering will kill off the bit where the data lies.

having said that you’ll find the plug in appliance is built to pretty demanding tolerances.

That.. sounds cool. If it ends up workable. I beleive such things have been trialled in Europe, but never worked very well, or something. I may need to do more research on it.

This is the kind of thing that would make me interested in moving to Queanbeyan…
Maybe.

Best to invest in a surge protector as well.

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