IBM says its BOPL will serve rural America

According to news reports, IBM says it wants to bring high speed Internet to rural areas of the nation using Broadband over Powerline technology.

The company has penned a $9.6 million contract with
International Broadband Electric Communications to deliver high-speed broadband connectivity to millions of people who, both companies claim, might otherwise not be able to get it.

The Wall Street Journal reported that IBM and International Broadband Electric Communications are working with over a dozen electric cooperatives in seven states. IBM will provide the data technology while International Broadband Electric Communications will actually manage the networks.

For years the supporters of BPL have hoped that it would allow power companies to become the third alternative in the broadband market, competing against cable operators and telephone companies. But technical limitations and interference issues with radio systems including those used
by ham radio operators have stood in the way of mass adoption.

Whether or not this latest attempt to deploy BPL will meet with any measure of success is questionable. Even though IBM and International Broadband Electric Communications are focusing on rural and underserved markets, it seems like they still have an uphill battle in overcoming interference
issues.

Only a few months ago the deployment of BPL was handed what industry observers considered to be a proverbial death blow. This, after federal appeals court sided in part with the ARRL and the amateur radio community in its challenge to FCC rules designed to speed the service's rollout.
The judges in the case sent the rules back to the FCC with
instructions to clarify its reasoning for its rules and to publicize its studies more fully.

Also, deploying any new infrastructure whether it's wired or wireless won't be cheap. Even with the powerlines already in place, some reports say that it could take years before rural Americans get high-speed Internet. And other technologies, such as 4G wireless may offer lower cost and higher speeds with fewer technical issues than BPL.

An article in the latest IEEE Communications Magazine reports on a research effort by NATO that shows that BPL would cause interference to military communications systems.

The bottom line:
What affect a successful rural rollout of BPL by IBM and International Broadband Electric Communications might have on ham radio communications will not be known until the first system is in trial operation.

Source: ARNewsline, the VHF Reflector, K0SQ, K2GW, KB6NU and other published news reports.

See http://kb6nu.com/more-evidence-that-bpl-causes-interference/ for the implications to military communications