Virgin in talks with Power firms

[techguy]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06...dia_subsidies/

It now wants to use the power firms infrastructure to expand in rural and semi-rural areas. Maybe Openreach is charging too much for access??

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by techguy

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06...dia_subsidies/

It now wants to use the power firms infrastructure to expand in rural and semi-rural areas. Maybe Openreach is charging too much for access??

You sure? Sounds to me like it will be in areas where BT has no broadband access and no plans to install it.

Virgin Media plans to expand its cable network to up to a million homes in areas where BT doesn't think upgrading its network will be worthwhile - and the cable company says it won't need subsidies to do it.

[Horizon]

This has been touted for many years but it'll be interesting to see how VM actually do it.

I've always assumed that VM (its predecessor companies) would use power lines to distribute cable tv and internet out into the countryside in the same way that I use homeplugs to distribute the net around my home.

But I wonder, when the article says using the power firms infrastructure, they could just mean using the electricity pylons to sling their own cable between them. No digging roads or digging up Farmer Giles' fields. It could be a very cheap way to extend VM's network. And VM could use microwave/mobile transmitters to take the signal the "last mile" into small towns and villages.

But, if VM do actually use the power lines themselves, I would have concerns about how effective the signal quality would be especially when everyone turns on the kettle.

[DaiNasty]

Originally Posted by Horizon

But, if VM do actually use the power lines themselves, I would have concerns about how effective the signal quality would be especially when everyone turns on the kettle.

LOL. Do you think we'd get a 'brown-out' on the broadband signal during the commercial breaks?

[Chris]

Originally Posted by Horizon

But, if VM do actually use the power lines themselves, I would have concerns about how effective the signal quality would be especially when everyone turns on the kettle.

It helps if you read the article:

Originally Posted by El Reg, paragraph 2

It is in talks with power companies for access to their streetside poles

Poles, not lines.

[Horizon]

Originally Posted by Chris

It helps if you read the article:

I did.

A trial is just that, a trial. I'm 100% certain that what they are doing in the trial wont be mapped over for deployment.

No mention is made of how VM's signal gets to the village only what they do with it once its there. It is not commercially viable to run fibre direct into homes in small villages. If it were, BT would have done it with their national wide network of telephone poles.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by Horizon

But, if VM do actually use the power lines themselves, I would have concerns about how effective the signal quality would be especially when everyone turns on the kettle.

????????????????????????????

It's fibre, not using power lines but running fibre over them.

Unless you boil your kettle with lasers I'm sure you'll be fine.

I would have thought someone in Seven Kings Head End would realise that.

[Ignitionnet]

Cable operators in the States, Canada, etc, etc, have shared utility poles with the power company since the beginning of their cable deployments Horizon. It's a non-issue to either optical or RF sections of network. Open and unterminated cable points in homes are far more of an 'issue' for ingress than sharing a pole with a power line.

[Horizon]

....but they're not sharing poles in this trial. And as far as I know, cable deployments, including using shared poles are in large towns and cities in the States. There is no cable in small towns, although an American small town is "slightly" larger than one of ours.

I can sling fibre from two of my own poles and charge a lot less. So, what is the point of this "trial" apart from grabbing a headline. And I repeat, how does the signal get to the village in the first place, fibre, coaxial, magic??? and how does it link to VM's network. If it's all by fibre and its so cheap to do it, why hasn't it been done before and by BT?

The article is short on key details.

Originally Posted by Pierre

????????????????????????????

It's fibre, not using power lines but running fibre over them.

Unless you boil your kettle with lasers I'm sure you'll be fine.

I would have thought someone in Seven Kings Head End would realise that.

Yes, I know it's fibre but they are not running it over power cables or using power companies' poles.

Don't understand your seven kings comment.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Horizon

....but they're not sharing poles in this trial. And as far as I know, cable deployments, including using shared poles are in large towns and cities in the States. There is no cable in small towns, although an American small town is "slightly" larger than one of ours.

No cable in small towns? Cable TV is more watched in the US than OTA or satellite, nearly 60% of US homes take cable, and its' availability is over 90% One big reason for this coverage is the sharing of utility poles.

The maths is a bit different for Virgin compared with BT. BT get paid whether they upgrade people or not, Virgin covering a new area is a whole new revenue stream and using power company poles throughout massively reduces cost of rollout. In some ways rural areas with poor levels of competition are an even better market for Virgin than urban ones where they compete with Telefonica, Sky, etc and could give a potentially higher uptake.

Certainly some rural areas are quite persuasive for upgrades as the cost per home of upgrades to FTTP are comparable to London. Getting rid of many of those costs by using utility poles is another bonus. Nice clusters of homes close together with minimal civils required to get to them.

[Chris]

There are a good number of homes out here in the middle of nowhere that are strung out over a fair distance, but there's an overhead powerline running up the valley behind them with a spur off to each house, or group of houses. The power lines are overhead to the point of property entry in many cases. Those where the final approach is buried still have the final pole within a couple of dozen metres from the property.

We'd all love super-fast fibre broadband - none of us can get more than 8Mb, most get no more than 2-3 and nobody north of me gets anything at all.

[weesteev]

The trial was to determine how the engineering aspects of using poles to deliver service could be be overcome. The network engineers have worked on an access network for 20+ years that has been in the ground so this is all new technology for them.

Virgin have to identify the risks and issues caused by bringing the !invisible" core network aspects it currently has underground, above ground and onto poles. It also has to trial new equipment to provision this type of service as the existing transmission equipment will not be able to be pole mounted in its current state. The trial would also extend to FTTC and FTTH to determine how the varying technologies would affect the distribution of service. Its a hell of a lot of work, I still have to see how the trial is going, I keep forgetting to check it out!

[Horace]

I know this isn't the main reason for these trials but could Virgin use this to bring FTTH within their existing cabled areas?

[hamradio-op]

Internet access (broadband over powerlines)

Broadband over power lines (BPL), also known as power-line Internet or powerband, is the use of PLC technology to provide broadband Internet access through ordinary power lines. A computer (or any other device) would need only to plug a BPL "modem" into any outlet in an equipped building to have high-speed Internet access. International Broadband Electric Communications or IBEC and other companies currently offer BPL service to several electric cooperatives.

BPL may offer benefits over regular cable or DSL connections: the extensive infrastructure already available appears to allow people in remote locations to access the Internet with relatively little equipment investment by the utility. Also, such ubiquitous availability would make it much easier for other electronics, such as televisions or sound systems, to hook up. Cost of running wires such as ethernet in many buildings can be prohibitive; Relying on wireless has a number of predictable problems including security, limited maximum throughput and inability to power devices efficiently.

But variations in the physical characteristics of the electricity network and the current lack of IEEE standards mean that provisioning of the service is far from being a standard, repeatable process. And, the amount of bandwidth a BPL system can provide compared to cable and wireless is in question. The prospect of BPL could motivate DSL and cable operators to more quickly serve rural communities. [1]

PLC modems transmit in medium and high frequency (1.6 to 80 MHz electric carrier). The asymmetric speed in the modem is generally from 256 kbit/s to 2.7 Mbit/s. In the repeater situated in the meter room the speed is up to 45 Mbit/s and can be connected to 256 PLC modems. In the medium voltage stations, the speed from the head ends to the Internet is up to 135 Mbit/s. To connect to the Internet, utilities can use optical fiber backbone or wireless link.

Deployment of BPL has illustrated a number of fundamental challenges, the primary one being that power lines are inherently a very noisy environment. Every time a device turns on or off, it introduces a pop or click into the line. Energy-saving devices often introduce noisy harmonics into the line. The system must be designed to deal with these natural signaling disruptions and work around them. For these reasons BPL can be thought of as a halfway between wireless transmission (where likewise there is little control of the medium through which signals propagate) and wired transmission (but not requiring any new cables).

Broadband over power lines has developed faster in Europe than in the United States due to a historical difference in power system design philosophies. Power distribution uses step-down transformers to reduce the voltage for use by customers. But BPL signals cannot readily pass through transformers, as their high inductance makes them act as low-pass filters, blocking high-frequency signals. So, repeaters must be attached to the transformers. In the U.S., it is common for a small transformer hung from a utility pole to service a single house or a small number of houses. In Europe, it is more common for a somewhat larger transformer to service 10 or 100 houses. For delivering power to customers, this difference in design makes little difference for power distribution. But for delivering BPL over the power grid in a typical U.S. city requires an order of magnitude more repeaters than in a comparable European city. On the other hand, since bandwidth to the transformer is limited, this can increase the speed at which each household can connect, due to fewer people sharing the same line. One possible solution is to use BPL as the backhaul for wireless communications, for instance by hanging Wi-Fi access points or cellphone base stations on utility poles, thus allowing end-users within a certain range to connect with equipment they already have.

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by hamradio-op

Internet access (broadband over powerlines)

That's not what this is.