It is great to see how quickly this story was spotted.
Still, peeling away some of the puffery, IBEC proposes to charge $29.95
a month in sparsely populated rural areas for a BPL system that requires a
repeater every half mile and provides data speeds “just a few times
faster that of dial-up.” That doesn’t
sound all that appealing.
The concept sounds similar to what was tried in
Assuming we keep an eye on the IBEC/IBM partnership to see if it gets
beyond the press release stage, we can wait and see if installation of a real
system is proposed. At that point we will be able to look into and address the
specific concerns raised by that system.
73,
Jay, KØQB
-----Original Message-----
From: Andy Oppel
[mailto:andy.oppel@gmail.com]
Sent:
To: arrl-odv
Cc: arrl-odv
Subject: [arrl-odv:17308] Re: IBM
now partnering with BPL provider for rural areas
Bob and I have already received at least one e-mail
regarding this one (from a Section Manager) and more queries from members
(particularly in the proposed service area) are sure to follow.
Personally, I have a lot of trouble remembering which technology providers are
good guys vs. bad guys vis-a-vis amateur spectrum pollution. Perhaps we
should have a simple list of providers somewhere along with what we know about
their threat to amateur communciations (something like "high",
"low", "unknown"). It would make responding to
queries that sometimes come weeks after an announcement easier to field.
-- Andy Oppel, N6AJO
On Wed,
Cliff, thanks for that. That story apparently
was picked up by the Wall Street Journal as well.
At least it is IBEC, which is not one of the toxic BPL companies....
Chris W3KD
Christopher D. Imlay
BOOTH, FRERET, IMLAY & TEPPER, P.C.
(301) 384-5525 telephone
(301) 384-6384 facsimile
W3KD@ARRL.ORG
-----Original Message-----
From: Cliff Ahrens <cahrens@mywdo.com>
To: arrl-odv <arrl-odv@reflector.arrl.org>
Sent:
Subject: [arrl-odv:17305] IBM now partnering with BPL provider for rural areas
The BPL saga continues. Here's a link to a report on Yahoo Finance that IBMis partnering with a small newcomer to offer BPL to 340,000 homes in rural