ISPs Owned By...Power Companies? 16
Jkior asks: "I've been using a local ISP - no problems for over a year and excellent service. Recently, however, they were bought out by a regional electric company. Which started me wondering - considering the GB/S or so bandwidth planned by MediaFusion, using the power lines. Is this happening anywhere else? Could power companies be seeing the possibilities in this?" MediaFusion's basic plan is to use the magnetic field surrounding the powerline as a communications medium as opposed to voltage or amplitude modulation. Since power lines connect more people than even phone and cable, might the beginnings of a true broadband global network be right around the corner?
nah... (Score:2)
Economics often don't pan out... (Score:3)
One was that Nortel had stopped R+D on their bid to do this, mainly because the bandwidth available did not stand up economically to future requirements. Too little too late, and optical fiber had more promise.
Two, because of the planning and engineering needed to install the basic tranceivers, and the lack of mass manufacturing of same, it was cheaper to install optical fiber. Not to mention the lowered insurance and labor costs of installing away from substations and transmission lines.
What about Maxwell's equations? (Score:2)
They use a bunch of buzzwords, like "maser" and "synthetic aperture", but no real information. I won't trust it until I see it.
Montana Power Company (Score:2)
The whole thing made sense to me when it was explained, and the fellow doing the explaining was one of these scarily brilliant, but obtuse folks. He used to write his documents in raw postscript, in vi, when he wanted something fancy.
Anyway, power companies have lots of right-of-ways, they know how to get something from them to the customer, they have field people, they understand outages, they know how to bury, hang, wire, and do all that other stuff. So, in short, it shouldn't be much of a stretch.
Missing the point (Score:2)
The thing power companies have to bring to the internet game is "rights of way."
See, they've got the rights to pass wires over all this land all over the map. Originally it was all thick copper carying kilowats. Now they just need ot hang an additional (fiber optic) cable on the same towers and viola! Low entry cost to good margin biz with significant barriers to competitors.
Re:Powerline networking devices (Score:1)
Power companies (Score:2)
Re:Reliability (Score:1)
Yeah, because then they won't have an incentive to do well. Oh wait.
Reliability (Score:2)
Of course, I'm sure de-regulation will fix that problem.
I see what your saying... (Score:1)
"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, first you have to create the universe."
Conspiracy Theories and Sci-Fi aside... (Score:1)
...this is is far simpler than you would think.
A lot of power companies, in the process of building nationwide power connectivity, laid fiber as well. They want to generate traffic (and revenue) from this dark fiber, and are snapping up ISP's and network companies to build out layer three.
Sorry, I know it's not as sexy.Re:buzzwords (Score:2)
Buzzword: an important-sounding usually technical word or phrase often of little meaning used chiefly to impress laymen.
Using the term "synthetic aperture" and "Maser" without providing any real explanation seems more of an attempt to obfuscate and redirect the reader away from trying to understand their technology than provide information. This fully fits into the definiton of buzzword.
I know what a MASER is and what Synthetic Aperture is. You are mistaken about synthetic aperture, though. It is *NOT* a type of radar. It is a method of effectively creating a very large antenna by using a small antenna and motion of the antenna or target. It is generally used for radar. But the term only applies to a method of increasing gain and resolution. (I designed, built and operated experimental synthetic aperture radars for 6 years, so I have a bit of experience in this area.) It is not just an alternate way of using any standard radar, it is vastly different. It has its own advantages (when focused properly, high resolution independent of range, limited solely by noise) and limitations (like they can't provide an image in real time, and moving targets screw them up big time). I have no idea about what these guys are really doing, but it is more likely that they are using a phased array type of system, if they are actually using multiple antennas to provide gain.
buzzwords (Score:1)
First off, "maser" and "synthetic aperture" are NOT buzzwords... so get that out of your head.
A maser is a laser-type device that operates in the microwave RF region. That is, it uses feedback and avalanching within a medium to create coherent EM waves, at whatever strength you feel like.
"Synthetic aperture" is a type of radar system. I'm not sure what application it has to sending bits down a power line, but then again I'm not sure exactly what it is. But it has been around for a while, and when you use it on your radar system you get much better results, so like everyody in the world has converted over to it now.
Not buzzwords.
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Powerline networking devices (Score:1)
Anyways, now back to studying for those exams!
-mdek.net [mdek.net]
Don't forget they replace wires (Score:2)
My local power company replaces their overheard wires every 20 years, (Wires get weak I guess), and since they have crews to do that already the cost to run anouther wire is essentially zero.
Come to think of it, they also run an ISP, but that was mostly just anouther way to make money. None the less they would be failing their customers if they didn't look for solutions that allowed them to achive faster access.
Re:Missing the point (Score:2)
The phone company SPRINT started out as the
Southern Pasific Railroad Company Internal Telecomunications group.
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