OK, here's the deal.
My parents have this little farm in the middle of Ecuador, in the jungle. It's a good 30 miles or so to the nearest town with broadband, and about 3 miles to the nearest town with power lines. Their business deals with the internet, and right now they have to go out to town every few weeks to catch up on emails and send stuff off. It would be GREAT if we could get internet at the house (we have a little hydro generator, so we have power and a computer), but before this, we thought our only option would be satellite, which (last we checked) was a couple thousands dollars to install, and a few hundred a month for the service. So..no.
However, I got to thinking recently. Don't they do Broadband over Power these days? Mind you, I don't know much about it...just that many people use their home wiring to set up a little network, and power companies are talking about sending signals over their larger-distance lines to provide broadband to everyone.
Is it possible/legal/affordable to use public power lines to transmit a medium-bandwidth data signal for 30 miles or so, and then use a couple wireless routers with directional antennas to go the rest of the way? I really don't know. Intuitively, the signal should transmit OK, and will make it through any transformers, but I don't know whether it would have to be strong enough to be disruptive to power quality (which is, granted, worse than the US), or if it's practical for a "home user". I can only assume that the little "household network" devices wouldn't have the juice for it.
Assuming that's a no-go, (which I'd imagine it to be..it's a long shot), what about using a ham radio or something for internet? I'd assume it wouldn't be fast, but anything is better than nothing. Since there's no cellphone reception, we can't do that, but with a good antenna I'd imagine a ham radio would reach...I'm not too sure what the FCC, or whoever monitors the airwaves in this part of the world, would think about it, though.
Or maybe there are other alternatives I haven't thought of? Carefully-aimed lasers? A herd of specially-trained jaguars to carry the ones and zeros to the nearest modem? Some sort of ESP connection between our computer and one in the town?
Tell me what you think.
My parents have this little farm in the middle of Ecuador, in the jungle. It's a good 30 miles or so to the nearest town with broadband, and about 3 miles to the nearest town with power lines. Their business deals with the internet, and right now they have to go out to town every few weeks to catch up on emails and send stuff off. It would be GREAT if we could get internet at the house (we have a little hydro generator, so we have power and a computer), but before this, we thought our only option would be satellite, which (last we checked) was a couple thousands dollars to install, and a few hundred a month for the service. So..no.
However, I got to thinking recently. Don't they do Broadband over Power these days? Mind you, I don't know much about it...just that many people use their home wiring to set up a little network, and power companies are talking about sending signals over their larger-distance lines to provide broadband to everyone.
Is it possible/legal/affordable to use public power lines to transmit a medium-bandwidth data signal for 30 miles or so, and then use a couple wireless routers with directional antennas to go the rest of the way? I really don't know. Intuitively, the signal should transmit OK, and will make it through any transformers, but I don't know whether it would have to be strong enough to be disruptive to power quality (which is, granted, worse than the US), or if it's practical for a "home user". I can only assume that the little "household network" devices wouldn't have the juice for it.
Assuming that's a no-go, (which I'd imagine it to be..it's a long shot), what about using a ham radio or something for internet? I'd assume it wouldn't be fast, but anything is better than nothing. Since there's no cellphone reception, we can't do that, but with a good antenna I'd imagine a ham radio would reach...I'm not too sure what the FCC, or whoever monitors the airwaves in this part of the world, would think about it, though.
Or maybe there are other alternatives I haven't thought of? Carefully-aimed lasers? A herd of specially-trained jaguars to carry the ones and zeros to the nearest modem? Some sort of ESP connection between our computer and one in the town?
Tell me what you think.
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