January 2006 - arrl-odv - reflector.arrl.org

[arrl-odv:13645] Re: 35 letters
by Henry R. Leggette 28 Jan '06

28 Jan '06

35 lettersDave, I would like to receive one of the letters for my signature. Thanks! Henry - WD4Q ----- Original Message ----- From: Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ To: arrl-odv Sent: Friday, January 27, 2006 7:53 AM Subject: [arrl-odv:13636] 35 letters Good morning, As you'll recall from last week's Board meeting, President Harrison wants 35 letters -- one from each officer, director and vice director -- going to respective Congressmen requesting their co-sponsorship of H.Res. 230. If you have already written, please let me know the date of your prior letter (and if possible, email me a copy). If you have not already written, next week we will send you a letter ready for signature. Dave K1ZZ

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More BPL Good News
by n3llr＠earthlink.net 28 Jan '06

28 Jan '06

Pipe dream up here in NW PA is more piplines to lay fiber optic lines in. - Bil N3LLR -----Original Message----- From: "Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ" <dsumner(a)arrl.org> Subj: [arrl-odv:13643] Re: More BPL Good News Date: Fri Jan 27, 2006 6:50 pm Size: 642 bytes To: "arrl-odv" <arrl-odv(a)reflector.arrl.org> That's right, Kay. But of course anyone who ever passed Physics 101 knew that was a pipe dream. Dave ________________________________ From: Kay Craigie [mailto:n3kn@comcast.net] Sent: Fri 1/27/2006 11:14 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: [arrl-odv:13642] Re: More BPL Good News So BPL's not so hot in sparsely-populated rural areas. Well duh. Do I recall correctly that the blessing of BPL by the Washington bigwigs was sauced up with sentimental slop about how it could make broadband available to kiddies who live so far out in the back country it's past the orbit of Pluto? As George Wilson used to say, "Yeah, right!" 73 - Kay N3KN

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[arrl-odv:13643] Re: More BPL Good News
by Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ 27 Jan '06

27 Jan '06

That's right, Kay. But of course anyone who ever passed Physics 101 knew that was a pipe dream. Dave ________________________________ From: Kay Craigie [mailto:n3kn@comcast.net] Sent: Fri 1/27/2006 11:14 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: [arrl-odv:13642] Re: More BPL Good News So BPL's not so hot in sparsely-populated rural areas. Well duh. Do I recall correctly that the blessing of BPL by the Washington bigwigs was sauced up with sentimental slop about how it could make broadband available to kiddies who live so far out in the back country it's past the orbit of Pluto? As George Wilson used to say, "Yeah, right!" 73 - Kay N3KN

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[arrl-odv:13642] Re: More BPL Good News
by Kay Craigie 27 Jan '06

27 Jan '06

So BPL's not so hot in sparsely-populated rural areas. Well duh. Do I recall correctly that the blessing of BPL by the Washington bigwigs was sauced up with sentimental slop about how it could make broadband available to kiddies who live so far out in the back country it's past the orbit of Pluto? As George Wilson used to say, "Yeah, right!" 73 - Kay N3KN

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[arrl-odv:13641] Re: More BPL Good News
by Jim Weaver, K8JE 27 Jan '06

27 Jan '06

Wade, Scientific validity comes through repetition. In addition, spending the money on the study was good for the economy. Jim Weaver, K8JE, Director 5065 Bethany Rd., Mason, OH 45040 E-mail: k8je(a)arrl.org; Tel: 513-459-0142 ARRL Great Lakes Division ARRL, the Reason Amateur Radio is! Members, the Reason ARRL is! -----Original Message----- From: Wade [mailto:walstrom@mchsi.com] Sent: Friday, January 27, 2006 3:59 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: [arrl-odv:13640] Re: More BPL Good News They had to study what we already knew! 73, Wade W0EJ -----Original Message----- From: Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ [mailto:dsumner@arrl.org] Sent: Friday, January 27, 2006 2:50 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: [arrl-odv:13639] More BPL Good News Yesterday's Communications Daily carried the following story. Please don't retransmit it outside the Board family, as it is copyrighted. Dave In a setback for BPL technology, a soon-to-be- released National Rural Telecom Co-op (NRTC) study concluded BPL isn't appropriate for "sparsely-populated rural" broadband and utility applications. One of BPL's advantages touted by the industry is its ability to provide broadband to rural and underserved communities that aren't covered by DSL or cable modem, because power lines reach virtually every household. BPL's ability to reach rural areas is also the subject of investigation by NARUC's BPL Task Force. NRTC undertook 2 pilots with West Fla. Electric Co-op and Southern Md. Electric Co-op to test BPL's performance on rural feeders, with emphasis on speed, latency and network functionality. The Fla. trial had be discontinued because the vendor had trouble delivering equipment. The Md. trial, with equipment provided by Current Technologies, which has rolled out commercial BPL in Cincinnati, proved to be technology that could serve only a mile or 2 in length, Steve Collier, NRTC vp-emerging technologies told us. Collier offered only to provide an "overview" of the report, which is slated for release in Feb. Collier said the BPL signal could be repeated only twice on the rural line and "after that it basically is not particularly usable in bandwidth or network management." That led NRTC to conclude that while it may work well in densely populated urban areas, the technology isn't going to be a "great asset for long, rural feeders." So for people at the outer edges of a utility's service area, satellite will continue to the solution, he added. "You couldn't afford to build BPL even if it performed well to get to them." Even NRTC telephone members, who have built out 90% of their access lines with DSL, rely on wireless or satellite to reach the rest of their service areas, Collier said. The results aren't encouraging either for BPL's use in internal applications for rural cooperatives. Because the signal doesn't travel very far, BPL wouldn't be appropriate for utility applications, Collier said. Other less expensive power line carrier technologies exist for such services, he added. Besides the cost of having repeaters every half mile, reliability issues arose with 40 signal regenerators on a 20-mile long feeder, he said: "If one goes out, everything downstream of that is out of service until you find it and replace it." Also, each repeat of the signal causes loss of bandwidth and increase in latency, he said, that "at some point gets to be unacceptable." The study by no means suggests BPL doesn't work, he said: "It suggests as a technology it is not well suited to long, sparsely populated rural applications." Some NRTC members who have housing subdivisions with some consumer density and want to get into the ISP business might want to use BPL, Collier said: "But to cover an entire rural system with long sparsely populated areas, we are pretty convinced that it [BPL] is not solution in the foreseeable future." Collier said he had briefed the NARUC BPL Task Force in the past on its study, although there's no official agreement with the group. The state regulators will be briefed again on the finding of the study, he added. -- Dinesh Kumar

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[arrl-odv:13640] Re: More BPL Good News
by Wade 27 Jan '06

27 Jan '06

They had to study what we already knew! 73, Wade W0EJ -----Original Message----- From: Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ [mailto:dsumner@arrl.org] Sent: Friday, January 27, 2006 2:50 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: [arrl-odv:13639] More BPL Good News Yesterday's Communications Daily carried the following story. Please don't retransmit it outside the Board family, as it is copyrighted. Dave In a setback for BPL technology, a soon-to-be- released National Rural Telecom Co-op (NRTC) study concluded BPL isn't appropriate for "sparsely-populated rural" broadband and utility applications. One of BPL's advantages touted by the industry is its ability to provide broadband to rural and underserved communities that aren't covered by DSL or cable modem, because power lines reach virtually every household. BPL's ability to reach rural areas is also the subject of investigation by NARUC's BPL Task Force. NRTC undertook 2 pilots with West Fla. Electric Co-op and Southern Md. Electric Co-op to test BPL's performance on rural feeders, with emphasis on speed, latency and network functionality. The Fla. trial had be discontinued because the vendor had trouble delivering equipment. The Md. trial, with equipment provided by Current Technologies, which has rolled out commercial BPL in Cincinnati, proved to be technology that could serve only a mile or 2 in length, Steve Collier, NRTC vp-emerging technologies told us. Collier offered only to provide an "overview" of the report, which is slated for release in Feb. Collier said the BPL signal could be repeated only twice on the rural line and "after that it basically is not particularly usable in bandwidth or network management." That led NRTC to conclude that while it may work well in densely populated urban areas, the technology isn't going to be a "great asset for long, rural feeders." So for people at the outer edges of a utility's service area, satellite will continue to the solution, he added. "You couldn't afford to build BPL even if it performed well to get to them." Even NRTC telephone members, who have built out 90% of their access lines with DSL, rely on wireless or satellite to reach the rest of their service areas, Collier said. The results aren't encouraging either for BPL's use in internal applications for rural cooperatives. Because the signal doesn't travel very far, BPL wouldn't be appropriate for utility applications, Collier said. Other less expensive power line carrier technologies exist for such services, he added. Besides the cost of having repeaters every half mile, reliability issues arose with 40 signal regenerators on a 20-mile long feeder, he said: "If one goes out, everything downstream of that is out of service until you find it and replace it." Also, each repeat of the signal causes loss of bandwidth and increase in latency, he said, that "at some point gets to be unacceptable." The study by no means suggests BPL doesn't work, he said: "It suggests as a technology it is not well suited to long, sparsely populated rural applications." Some NRTC members who have housing subdivisions with some consumer density and want to get into the ISP business might want to use BPL, Collier said: "But to cover an entire rural system with long sparsely populated areas, we are pretty convinced that it [BPL] is not solution in the foreseeable future." Collier said he had briefed the NARUC BPL Task Force in the past on its study, although there's no official agreement with the group. The state regulators will be briefed again on the finding of the study, he added. -- Dinesh Kumar

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[arrl-odv:13639] More BPL Good News
by Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ 27 Jan '06

27 Jan '06

Yesterday's Communications Daily carried the following story. Please don't retransmit it outside the Board family, as it is copyrighted. Dave In a setback for BPL technology, a soon-to-be- released National Rural Telecom Co-op (NRTC) study concluded BPL isn't appropriate for "sparsely-populated rural" broadband and utility applications. One of BPL's advantages touted by the industry is its ability to provide broadband to rural and underserved communities that aren't covered by DSL or cable modem, because power lines reach virtually every household. BPL's ability to reach rural areas is also the subject of investigation by NARUC's BPL Task Force. NRTC undertook 2 pilots with West Fla. Electric Co-op and Southern Md. Electric Co-op to test BPL's performance on rural feeders, with emphasis on speed, latency and network functionality. The Fla. trial had be discontinued because the vendor had trouble delivering equipment. The Md. trial, with equipment provided by Current Technologies, which has rolled out commercial BPL in Cincinnati, proved to be technology that could serve only a mile or 2 in length, Steve Collier, NRTC vp-emerging technologies told us. Collier offered only to provide an "overview" of the report, which is slated for release in Feb. Collier said the BPL signal could be repeated only twice on the rural line and "after that it basically is not particularly usable in bandwidth or network management." That led NRTC to conclude that while it may work well in densely populated urban areas, the technology isn't going to be a "great asset for long, rural feeders." So for people at the outer edges of a utility's service area, satellite will continue to the solution, he added. "You couldn't afford to build BPL even if it performed well to get to them." Even NRTC telephone members, who have built out 90% of their access lines with DSL, rely on wireless or satellite to reach the rest of their service areas, Collier said. The results aren't encouraging either for BPL's use in internal applications for rural cooperatives. Because the signal doesn't travel very far, BPL wouldn't be appropriate for utility applications, Collier said. Other less expensive power line carrier technologies exist for such services, he added. Besides the cost of having repeaters every half mile, reliability issues arose with 40 signal regenerators on a 20-mile long feeder, he said: "If one goes out, everything downstream of that is out of service until you find it and replace it." Also, each repeat of the signal causes loss of bandwidth and increase in latency, he said, that "at some point gets to be unacceptable." The study by no means suggests BPL doesn't work, he said: "It suggests as a technology it is not well suited to long, sparsely populated rural applications." Some NRTC members who have housing subdivisions with some consumer density and want to get into the ISP business might want to use BPL, Collier said: "But to cover an entire rural system with long sparsely populated areas, we are pretty convinced that it [BPL] is not solution in the foreseeable future." Collier said he had briefed the NARUC BPL Task Force in the past on its study, although there's no official agreement with the group. The state regulators will be briefed again on the finding of the study, he added. -- Dinesh Kumar

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[arrl-odv:13638] More good BPL news
by Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ 27 Jan '06

27 Jan '06

The Idaho Statesman Article published Jan 27, 2006 IdaCorp subsidiary pulls out of BPL business IdaComm, a telecommunications subsidiary of Boise-based IdaCorp Inc., is getting out of the broadband over power line business, the company said. Broadband over power line, or BPL, is a new technology that can make high-speed Internet available through the electrical outlets of a home or office building by way of the electric power lines already in place. The company has abandoned BPL after seeing that electric utilities were not immediately embracing the technology, Jan B. Packwood, IdaCorp's chief executive officer, said in a statement. "It's a smart decision if indeed the BPL business cannot become profitable in any reasonable amount of time," said James Bellessa, an analyst with D.A. Davidson & Co. IdaCorp said getting out of BPL will cause the company to report a loss of 24 cents a share in its fourth quarter earnings. That loss will be slightly offset because the company estimates it will receive a gain of about 13 cents a share in the quarter from a settlement with California electric utilities and government agencies related to the energy crisis in 2000 and 2001. A company spokesman would not disclose the dollar amount IdaComm had invested in BPL, saying that was proprietary information. With the loss and settlement, Bellessa estimates IdaCorp will post $1.57 per share for its fiscal year earnings Since the decision was made to get out of BPL, IdaComm's Chief Executive Officer Chris Britton "has left the company to pursue other interests," the company said in a statement released Wednesday. An IdaCorp spokesman said he could not say whether Britton quit or was fired because it is a "personnel matter." IdaComm's Chief Financial Officer Bruce MacMahon has been named the company's interim CEO. <<ole0.bmp>>

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[arrl-odv:13637] Minutes of the 2006 Annual Meeting
by Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ 27 Jan '06

27 Jan '06

The Minutes will be released shortly. Thanks to everyone who reviewed the draft. 73, Dave K1ZZ <<2006 Annual Meeting Minutes FINAL.doc>>

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[arrl-odv:13636] 35 letters
by Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ 27 Jan '06

27 Jan '06

Good morning, As you'll recall from last week's Board meeting, President Harrison wants 35 letters -- one from each officer, director and vice director -- going to respective Congressmen requesting their co-sponsorship of H.Res. 230. If you have already written, please let me know the date of your prior letter (and if possible, email me a copy). If you have not already written, next week we will send you a letter ready for signature. Dave K1ZZ

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