The AM Forum

https://www.usnews.com/news/technology/articles/2017-12-13/at-t-begins-testing-high-speed-internet-over-power-lines

Over power lines, in the HF region.  To provide gigabit without AT&T having to do any infrastructure upgrade.

I mean, because technology marches on.  :-)

I wonder how close this comes to BPoL?

--Shane
KD6VXI

Not quite HF...

"AT&T and Verizon Communications (VZ), the largest U.S. wireless carrier, have also been testing 5G internet services in which the last leg of the connection is delivered via a radio signal to homes using high-frequency airwaves known as millimeter wave spectrum."

What is mm wave and how does it fit into 5G?
https://www.rcrwireless.com/20160815/fundamentals/mmwave-5g-tag31-tag99

The article, as written, sucks.  It looks like the bpl will be in the HF spectrum.  Then, as kg7bz points out later, they screw up and refer to mm wave as hf.

SO, I did some digging.

It appears this WILL be at uhf and higher.  Same freq range as '5g'. 

I feel like the boy who cried wolf lol.

It's 'Airgig' tech for those interested.

http://about.att.com/story/project_airgig_trials_georgia.html



--Shane
KD6VXI

I would have been surprised if it was anything on the power line. It would be tough to get 5G data rates on the power lines. Yes, you can get pretty high data rates (e.g. HomePlug AV) on the power lines within you home, but over any distance, not so much.

They are using power lines as backbone / back haul.

I only perused the zenneck waves thread.  Maybe something similar?

I know rf does NOT like the pole and substation xformers, so there is always the horrible coupling at rf to overcome...

--Shane
KD6VXI

It's 2007 all over again. BPL was busted then. Somewhere on here there's a thread about it.

I remember doing some investigations at Emerson's EMI/EMC lab to determine how it would play with our power systems. Not a pretty picture.