http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-03-19-powerline_x.htm?POE=TECISVA
Net over power lines irks amateur radio lovers
By Peter Svensson, The Associated Press
George Tarnovsky can hear the Internet as he drives down Main Street in
Manassas, Va., a rapid rattle emanating from the ham radio in his Chevy Tahoe.
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Ham radio enthusiast George Tarnovsky checks the interference on his radios in his truck near BPL
power lines.<http://images.usatoday.com/tech/_photos/2006/03/20/powerline180.jpg>
<http://images.usatoday.com/_common/_images/clear.gif> Ham radio enthusiast George
Tarnovsky checks the interference on his radios in his truck near BPL power lines.
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By Kevin Wolf, AP
"Suddenly you hear this incredible signal," Tarnovsky said.
The radio interference, which can resemble rapid clicks or the whine of a
phone-line modem, comes from a system that provides high-speed Internet access
to about 1,000 Manassas customers through their power lines. The interference
makes ham radio all but impossible in the Washington, D.C., suburb, Tarnovsky
said.
But in this fight of old and new, it appears that the old - ham radio has been
around for a century - will be left standing. Broadband over power line, or
BPL, is in danger of becoming an also-ran in the race to bring broadband
Internet to the American home, even as it's overcoming some technical hurdles.
BPL is an attractive idea because of the power grid's ubiquity. It has been touted as a
"third wire" into the home, a possible competitor to broadband via cable and
telephone wires - and a way to bring high-speed service to rural areas underserved by
cable and phone companies.
However, most of the utilities that have tried it have backed away, largely
because of skepticism about the economic viability of the technology in the
face of competition.
BPL hasn't lived up to its early promise as a rural broadband alternative,
either, because of a technical quirk that is also the source of the ham radio
frustrations. For broadband, a radio-frequency signal is applied to the power
line, much like a high-frequency signal is applied to phone lines to create a
digital subscriber line, or DSL.
But unlike phone and cable wires, power lines that run above ground can act as
large radio antennas, emitting the high-frequency signal as radio waves.
According to the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), the national ham radio
association, radio waves from an improperly designed system can drown out
amateur radio within a quarter of a mile.
The antenna nature of the line also means the signal loses its energy quickly,
while the line picks up radio noise from the surroundings. A long line running
in a rural area needs amplifiers at short intervals, adding to the costs; even
so, the signal gets lost after a few miles. The operator of the Manassas
broadband system, Communication Technologies, or ComTek, said it has made
adjustments to minimize interference.
Tarnovsky lives five miles outside the town, but to him, that's no excuse for interfering
with ham radio bands. He said the Internet signal threatens the communications services
that ham radio operators can provide from their cars in emergencies such as Hurricane
Katrina. "If we see interference, regardless of where it is, we have to report it to
the FCC," he said.
The Federal Communications Commission has generally spoken warmly about BPL's
potential, but this month, after two years of complaints from ham radio
operators, the FCC told Manassas to eliminate any harmful interference.
Nonetheless, some companies are pushing forward, and some variants of the
technology now get the thumbs-up from the national ham radio group. The ARRL is
optimistic about trials conducted with Motorola's BPL technology, which uses
only the short line from the nearest transformer to the home, using wireless
links in place of the interference-causing long lines.
It also has no problem with the USA's other major commercial BPL deployment, in
Cincinnati, which uses a different technology. There, local utility Cinergy
formed a joint venture with Current Communications of Germantown, Md., to sell
broadband for $30 a month. It's available to about 50,000 homes, but officials
won't say how many have signed up.
Current is starting this year on a much larger deployment with utility TXU,
covering 2 million homes in Texas, mainly in the Dallas area. It will use the
next generation of its technology, allowing speeds up to 10 megabits per
second, 10 times as fast as Cincinnati's and faster than most cable and DSL
broadband links.
For the hams, though, it's still too early to heave a sigh of relief. They say
BPL systems that interfere with their bands are still allowed under FCC rules.
They want tougher regulations now that non-interfering technologies such as
Current's and Motorola's are available.
