AT&T Labs' Project AirGig Nears First Field Trials for Ultra-Fast Wireless Broadband Over Power Lines
Urban, Rural and Underserved Parts of the World Could Benefit from AT&T's Innovative Wireless, Multi-Gigabit-Speed Internet Connectivity
Where There Are Power Lines, There Can Be Broadband
AT&T unveiled today Project AirGig, a transformative technology from AT&T Labs that could one day deliver low-cost, multi-gigabit wireless internet speeds using power lines. We're deep in the experimentation phase. This technology will be easier to deploy than fiber, can run over license-free spectrum and can deliver ultra-fast wireless connectivity to any home or handheld wireless device. We designed Project AirGig literally from the ground up to be both practical and transformational. Our initial and ongoing testing at AT&T outdoor facilities has been positive. We expect to kick off our first field trials in 2017.
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Neal McLain
***** Moderator's Note *****This sort of breathless, amateur-hour self-promotion by AT&T would normally merit no more than a trip to the bit-bucket. However, I'm publishing it because I want to make people think about some advice my dad gave me over fifty years ago: he said "They'll spend a million dollars to eliminate your job."
He was right. BPL is yet-another-effort to eliminate the jobs of the technicians who are paid to wire the last 100 feet of any current Internet connection method. It is designed to allow the wet dream of every monopolist in telecommunications: the provisioning of Internet (and therefore telephone) service through the post office, with customer-installable devices arriving in the mail, which require only that they be plugged into an electrical outlet.
It doesn't matter that BPL has gone through several deaths and rebirths, or that it is widely thought of to be impractical. So long as the labor costs are at stake, BPL will keep crawling out of the grave.
Bill Horne Moderator