Wirt draws our attention to the possibility of using power lines to
transmit data at speeds up to 384k bits....

It is an "Urban Legend" here in South Africa, that the state-owned
Railways and the state-owned Power Company have, over the years, had an
on-going fight with the state-owned Telecom company about the formers'
by-passing the latter's service by operating data/fax/voice
communications over their respective power lines.

I'm not sure of the details, but it makes perfect sense.

Maybe the water companies could step in on this, and use the pipes
carrying water to and from houses to carry data :)

Regards

Neil


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Wirt Atmar [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 1997 10:56 PM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      Power LAN -- The Sequel
>
> A few months back, there was a bit of discussion on this list
> regarding the
> possibility of using the AC electric power distribution network as a
> LAN (or
> even a WAN). If you remember, we came to the conclusion that it is
> quite
> possible.
>
> In that regard, the following article appeared today on the business
> newswire:
>
> =====================================
>
> LONDON -- Engineers claim to have developed a breakthrough technology
> that
> would let homeowners make phone calls and access the Internet at high
> speeds
> via the electric outlets in their walls.
>
> If the technology developed by United Utilities PLC and Northern
> Telecom Ltd.
> proves commercially viable, it could transform power lines around the
> world
> into major conduits on the information superhighway. Because
> electricity
> flows into virtually every home and office the new technology could
> give
> power companies easy entree into the phone and Internet access
> businesses,
> thus posing a serious threat to current providers of those services.
>
> Both United Utilities, a power company, and Northern Telecom, a
> Canadian
> maker of telecom gear, confirmed that their system was "ready for the
> mass
> market," but declined to reveal details until a news conference
> scheduled for
> Wednesday. A Northern Telecom spokesman also declined to elaborate.
>
> While the technology must still be proven on a large scale, the two
> companies
> have tested telephone service over power lines in about 20 U.K.
> households
> over the last 12 months -- with positive results, according to
> Alistair
> Henderson, chief of technology at Energis PLC, the telecom unit of
> National
> Grid Group PLC, which owns and operates the electricity-transmission
> system
> in England and Wales. Energis, one of several power companies that has
> secretly worked with United Utilities on the "power line telephony"
> project,
> hopes to use the system to offer data services to its own business
> customers.
>
>
> "It's very good news for utilities, indeed," says Mr. Henderson.
> "Everybody
> has an electricity line to their homes, and every business has
> electric
> supply. "At long last, the local monopoly of the incumbent telecom
> operators
> is about to be demolished."
>
> But some questions remain. Although United Utilities' initial tests
> have been
> successful, technical and safety wrinkles have to be ironed out.
> There's also
> likely to be intensifying competition from a host of other wanna-be
> phone and
> Internet service providers, including cable companies and outfits that
> use
> wireless technology to provide high-speed access. And for the new
> system to
> be commercially feasible, a power utility would have to sign up 40% or
> more
> of homes and offices in a particular neighborhood, Mr. Henderson says.
>
> This could prove a difficult task as existing telecommunications
> players have
> proven to be adept at making life hard for new entrants. The Baby
> Bells in
> the U.S., for example, have largely thwarted efforts by AT&T Corp. and
> MCI
> Communications Corp. to enter the local telephone business.
>
> In recent years electric utilities in the U.S. and Europe have been
> trying to
> enter the telecom fray by the more conventional method of stringing
> fiber-optic cables along power lines. But so far they've had limited
> success.
> As a result, utilities have waited for exactly this kind of
> breakthrough to
> make a big splash in the telecom wars.
>
> While electric lines have been used before to zap tiny amounts of data
> between computers, their capacity has always been limited, making
> commercial
> applications unfeasible. Now United Utilities' telecom arm, Norweb
> Communications, has found a way to transmit data at a speed of more
> than 384
> kilobits per second over regular electricity lines -- more than 10
> times the
> speed of Internet modems used by most households with regular
> telephone
> lines.
>
> The advantage of the latest system -- which uses cellular phone
> technology to
> transmit signals along electric wires -- is that utilities needn't
> spend vast
> amounts of to build new telecom infrastructure, since existing power
> lines
> can simultaneously transmit both electricity, and a phone call, say.
> Electricity doesn't interfere with the phone transmission for the same
> reason
> that a radio broadcast doesn't interfere with a simultaneous TV
> broadcast:
> the frequencies are very different. "Utilities won't have to touch the
> wires
> underground," notes Mr. Henderson.
>
> Of course, there will be some cost to utilities that want to
> commercialize
> the new technology and enter the telecom business. Utilities will have
> to
> install a device in each residence or office to separate the
> electricity and
> phone transmissions. From the device, one line will deliver the
> telephone and
> Internet link, while the other will deliver electricity. In the case
> of the
> two companies' test, Northern Telecom is believed to have built the
> box that
> separates the power and data transmissions.
>
> ====================================