Solihull announces plans for BPL/PLT

Solihull in England could get a BPL system along with the resultant RF intereference problems.

It has been reported that Solihull Community Housing, which manages 11000 rented homes in the town, will implement the project with technology partner, CI-Net.

They plan to provide Internet bandwidth to the buildings via CI-Net's RedKite wireless connectivity service which uses Pre-Wimax radio signals to deliver high speed, symmetrical broadband without physical telecoms lines.

The RedKite wireless radio signal will be transferred to the buildings' electrical power lines to enable Internet access through three pin sockets in tenants' homes.

Personal Computer World magazine had this to say about data-over-mains devices:

"Mains wiring acts as an aerial when passing radio-frequency data signals and, as we have reported before there are fears about the cummulative effect in cities if the technology gets taken up on the same scale as WiFi."

A NATO report was also critical of Internet access via the mains.

Solihull Community Housing:
North Solihull community will plug' into free Internet over power lines http://www.individual.com/story.php?story=82917641

North Solihull community will 'plug' into free Internet over power lines http://www.publictechnology.net/
article_avantgo.php?sid=15835

CI-Net
http://www.ci-net.com/

Data over mains in Personal Computer World magazine http://www.southgatearc.org/news/october2007/
data_over_mains.htm

NATO releases major report on effects of BPL
(Internet over electrical power lines) http://www.southgatearc.org/news/september2007/
nato_bpl_report.htm