Hydro-Electric Broadband?

Author
Discussion

drs

Original Poster:

44 posts

275 months

Sunday 19th October 2003
quotequote all
Any one know anything about this? I read that there have been trials etc. but cannot find any info on possible rollout.

Cheers Donald

joust

14,622 posts

261 months

Sunday 19th October 2003
quotequote all

agent006

12,050 posts

266 months

Sunday 19th October 2003
quotequote all
I assume you mean Scottish HydroElectric running trials of broadband through power lines? No idea, other than it'll not be this side of Pistonfest 2004

outlaw

1,893 posts

268 months

Sunday 19th October 2003
quotequote all
i will be intresting if it carches on as the grid has the capacity to give much greater speeds thad cable or asdl to home users.

davidd

6,482 posts

286 months

Monday 20th October 2003
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I spoek with a senior bod at 247 on this topic last year. His response was that cue to the fact that bits of the infrastructure are 100 years old there is a lot of noise on the lines. This meant that getting decent clean data rates was very difficult and therefore not cost effective. They did however say that they were keeping an eye on the Scottish trials.

D.

davidd

6,482 posts

286 months

Monday 20th October 2003
quotequote all
I spoek with a senior bod at 247 on this topic last year. His response was that cue to the fact that bits of the infrastructure are 100 years old there is a lot of noise on the lines. This meant that getting decent clean data rates was very difficult and therefore not cost effective. They did however say that they were keeping an eye on the Scottish trials.

D.

joust

14,622 posts

261 months

Monday 20th October 2003
quotequote all
As we provide the underlying ISP service for the SE trial here's the lowdown.

It works a bit like a cable modem - hence bandwidth is shared (unlike ADSL where the bandwidth to the exchange is dedicated).
The bandwidth is less than ADSL underlying (ADSL actually goes at 8Mbps downstream - just the service providers choose to only sell 512kbps)
It has significant scalabiluity issues
Noise is a problem, as are general power problems
Costs at the moment are currently high for the end user kit, but dropping rapidly.
The coverage is sub-station based, which means large amount of infrastructure is needed (i.e. high capital costs)

The trials are going well, so expect to see more of this. It is an interesting "alternative" to ADSL - but suffers from the same issues as cable modems as is very capital intensive to roll out to large areas.

J

DRS

Original Poster:

44 posts

275 months

Friday 31st October 2003
quotequote all
cheers for the info, thought this all sounded a bit too good to be true.