Australia's BPL battle continues

After a fairly quiet Christmas there have been a few recent developments on the BPL front:

On the morning of 22 February 2006, ABC Goulburn Murray radio (rural Victoria) ran several segments on how broadband over powerlines (BPL) will bring the Internet to every home.

Aurora Energy extolled BPL's features and benefits, followed by industry analyst Paul Budde, who proceeded to bag radio amateurs and the Wireless Institute of Australia for their opposition to BPL. Budde was clearly antagonised and frustrated by radio amateurs' continued opposition to BPL
and incredulously claimed RF interference from BPL just isn't an issue anymore.

I was able to respond to Budde's comments on-air and say that is well documented that wherever BPL is installed worldwide it still causes very high levels of radiated emission.

There appears to be a world war brewing over standards for in-house BPL.

Europe's BPL Research Alliance (OPERA) have announced their first global specification for Powerline Communications based largely on technology from Spain's DS2.

However, the US based HomePlug Powerline Alliance is aiming at exactly the same world-standard designation. The standard being proposed by OPERA and the HomePlug specifications are incompatible.

The stage is set for a world war to determine which standard becomes dominant for in-house applications. The HomePlug specification and the OPERA specification are incompatible and each causes interference to the other.

Netgear have decided to go with the DS2 standard. This week NETGEAR announced that they are to offer in-home BPL equipment capable of transmitting high definition in-home video streaming.

We believe a proliferation of these devices in the community could be very damaging for HF radiocommunications. We hope ACMA is watching this development closely.

PC World, reported this week that Canberra telecommunications provider TransACT is to commence a trial of BPL in its own head office in Canberra.

TransACT CIO and general manager Carsten Larsen said the company is looking at delivering the Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) service to office buildings.
Larsen said. "The engineering is being drawn up. If we go from here to a connected environment, we can take the lessons from here to a live site.

Should the trial prove successful, TransACT propose a commercial rollout of BPL later this year.

For more information on these BPL stories please visit the WIA website at www.wia.org.au

And remember if you hear anything on the media concerning BPL, please record it, and in any case, please let the WIA know.

Phil Waite VK2DKN
WIA DIRECTOR

Source: Wireless Institute of Australia

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