Where's the spark on power line Net?
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The NYT has an optimistic overview on broadband over power lines, calling it "the ultimate plug and play." [Broadband Blog]
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SPRINGDALE, Washington County  -- Replacing a power pole damaged during the Kolob fire in July will result in a 12-hour power outage today in eastern Washington County, causing some businesses to close and the visitors center at Zion National Park to bring in portable toilets.
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The Story: Some technologies always seem to be ?just around the corner.? Seven years ago, there was a big flurry of interest in end-to-end Ethernet (aka metro Ethernet) as a brace of new ventures promised to cut through the complexities of wide area networking.[ Slideshow: 2007's top underreported tech stories ]                                                    They didn?t deliver. One big reason: building a new network that will reach into offices and homes costs beaucoup bucks. As IDC analyst Boyd Chastant puts it, ?Digging a whole in the ground never gets cheaper.?Laying fiber is still expensive, but now telcos ? including AT&amp;T, Verizon, and Qwest ? plus cable companies such as Optimum LightPath, Cox, and Time Warner that already have fiber in the ground are offering Ethernet services. LightPath, for example, boasts of 2,500 miles of fiber in the ground and says it has lit more than 2,000 buildings in its service area in the northeast.End-to-end Ethernet offers a very affordable way to connect LANs to a wide area network. After all, every router has an Ethernet interface, you don?t need much special hardware, and the technology is very familiar. So most IT staffers will have little trouble adapting, says Burton Group analyst Jeff Young. That is, if you can get it: Pricing depends on your need for speed, and not all of the providers offer it throughout their service areas.Raw bandwidth isn?t Ethernet?s big advantage. It?s not necessarily much faster than private lines. However, says Chastant, it is more scalable. Conventional private-line services offer speeds near the bottom (around 10Mbps) and the near top (around 10Gbps), but not much in the middle. End-to-end Ethernet solves that. And it can be tied to Internet access, bumping up access speeds appreciably.Availability is on the upswing too, says Boyd. In the past, carriers worried that end-to-end Ethernet service would cannibalize other data services. But now that demand has reached critical mass, that concern appears to have faded. Meanwhile, providers and equipment manufacturers are ironing out incompatibles and clarifying service definitions in the Metro Ethernet Forum, Chastant says.It looks like we?ve turned the corner and end-to-end Ethernet is right in front of us.The Bottom Line: If your carrier doesn?t provide end-to-end Ethernet, another provider likely does. It?s worth the trouble to look: End-to-end Ethernet will give you the performance you need and because it?s a familiar technology you won?t have to retrain or replace your IT staff.Complete list of 2007 underreported stories: 1.? Java is becoming the new Cobol 2.? Sun Microsystems is back in the game 3.? Hackers take aim at Mac OS X 4.? There are some threats you can worry less about 5.? Companies may have found a way around H-1B visa limits 6.? Open source?s new commercial strategy 7.? End-to-end Ethernet finally arrives 8.? Blade servers arrive for the masses 9.? BI is dead; long live BI 10. Balance of power shifts to software buyers
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FCC clears the way for more companies to offer the alternative form of Net access. The US Federal Communications Commission this week cleared the way for power companies to roll out broadband over power line
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By Ron Sylvester, The Wichita Eagle, Kan.  Feb. 12--Flip a switch and the lights come on -- no thinking required. But think about what happens on the other end of that switch. To generate some of the power for that light, it takes a plant burning coal miles away.
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Weather-related outages left more than 5,000 Rocky Mountain Power customers in Salt Lake and Tooele counties without electricity for at least part of the day Sunday.  Some of those customers were expected to be without power until early today, company spokesman Jeff Hymas said.
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The computer company recalls nearly a 1 million power adapters that could start fires. Also: Microsoft continues pursuit towards the computer television & hellip;. Nextel & rsquo;s phone is a mapquest in your hand & hellip;. and more.
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As news of undersea cable cuts and conspiracy theories abound, there's an easy way to verify if internet access has indeed been severed anywhere in the world. Just use a simple network tool called traceroute. Learn how it's done on the Wired How-To Wiki.
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Here's a problem that some investment dollars help solve. Apparently, the TechCrunch 40 conference isn't streaming to the outside world because the Palace Hotel has incredibly lame networking, and they won't allow conference promoters to bring in more wires? This is what I hear, although it's not confirmed. Emails to the conference promoters yesterday were not responded to.  I've also received emails from a number of companies announcing products at the show who want coverage on Scripting News, so my interest is not entirely idle.  So what does it take to establish one hotel in SF as the default tech conference hotel? Networking! Geez, you'd think it's obvious by now. We do things that require networks. Look in any conference room around the world for a clue. And supposedly San Francisco is the central node in the network of technology bringing all this great stuff to the rest of the world. So where is the hotel that gives us the very most basic technology to wire up conferences so that the whole world can participate?  Do we need to move the tech industry to another city? Someone please ask the Mayor or Google or someone in charge when they're going to fix this problem. It should have been solved in 1997, and it's already 2007.  BTW, here's a clue: there are some great business opportunities, beyond conferences, for the first physical location in downtown SF to solve this problem. Just ask Loic.
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For at least a decade, phone companies have been promising to rewire America with fiber-optic cables. Now, with a romp of regulatory victories in hand, the regional Bells say they're free to make good on that ambitious plan to bring lightning-fast Web and TV services to all the nation's homes.
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It could be a single malfunctioning power supply. Or, from the other side of the glass, it could be a portent of doom for a technology that would make good use of all those TV channels that no one's broadcasting on, for wireless networking.
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RICHMOND, Feb. 12 -- Dominion Virginia Power has decided to build its new high-voltage transmission line along the path of existing electric cables in Northern Virginia's outer suburbs, sources said Monday night, bypassing pristine land where opposition to the company's plans has been fiercest.
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Wired NextFest shows how to get power from pond scum, pull cords and the wind. You'll also see how to save resources with asolar car, low-power computing and a self-reporting power cord. But wait, there's more....
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Using power lines for the net could disrupt a new digital radio system, a broadcasting conference hears.
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HomePlug Powerline Alliance members show off first products based on HomePlug AV 200-mbps power-line networking standard.
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11,000V + hacksaw = bang Derbyshire Police are looking for a "badly scorched" wannabe copper cable thief who decided it was a lucrative idea to hacksaw through an 11,000V power line, Reuters reports.â¦
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By PATRICK CONDON MINNETONKA, Minn. - When officials in this Minneapolis suburb didn't like the two eye-popping digital billboards that Clear Channel erected along the freeway, they pulled the plug. They had the power company cut off the electricity.