Tuesday, July 20, 2004

Powerline broadband vs shortwave/ham radio? A few months ago, I blogged a story that I thought pointed the way toward the future of universal broadband Internet. If memory serves, a Virginia town was working toward providing highspeed net connections over common power lines. Certainly sounds like a great idea--everyone's got electric sockets, right? Anyway, today HowStuffWorks sent me a note today offering its article on "How Powerline Broadband (BPL) Works," so I picked it right up. In it, I learned many an interesting thing on the technology, and then I found out that the idea had generated some opposition--from the American Radio Relay League, home of ham radio. ARRL believes that because ordinary powerlines are not shielded like coaxial cable and fiber optics, there is a tremendous danger that BPL signals will bleed heavily into the shortwave and amateur radio bands. Their position is described here. Given that the Internet has already nearly destroyed international shortwave broadcasting (courtesy of budget cuts for radio transmitters), it would be awful if universal broadband would deliver a death blow to amateur radio as well. So this will require some rethinking. 9:41:51 PM    comment []