When we first began our coverage of Broadband-over-Powerline (BPL), members of the ham radio community who also read Computing Unplugged made sure we understood that there’s actually a controversy here, an important one. As we began to research the topic further, one organization’s name kept coming up over and over: the American Radio Relay League, better known as the ARRL. After some back and forth dialog, Allen Pitts, Media and Public Relations Manager for the ARRL, agreed to be interviewed by Computing Unplugged. What follows is that interview.

We continue our editorial coverage of the broadband over powerline (BPL) controversy with a letter from Fred Stevens, a retired US Army Signal Corps Lieutenant Colonel who’s also an Amateur Radio operator. Fred took issue with some of our coverage of the BPL issue. Given his unique background, we asked him to expand upon his letter (he was quite annoyed with us). This is a worthy read. Fred has some very interesting perspectives. Because of some of the more controversial comments in the article, we’re obliged to state that the opinions of the author are not necessarily that of Computing Unplugged Magazine, the editors, or ZATZ Publishing.

If you’ve been following our Broadband-over-Powerline (BPL) coverage these past weeks, you can see we’ve come up with more questions than answers. As part of our attempt to expose all sides of this issue, we’ve been looking for true experts who can help us understand the issue. As part of that research, we turned up Glenn Elmore. We’re very grateful for Glenn in helping us understand this issue in far more depth than we’ve been able to thusfar. As a radio amateur and a BPL researcher, Glenn’s getting us answers as close to the core of the problem as we think we’re going to be able to find.

Throughout our research into BPL, we’ve talked about interference issues. In his in-depth interview, elsewhere in this issue, Glenn Elmore introduced the question of data rate across the various technologies. In this short, highly technical article, he shows how that data rate applies over a variety of "last-mile pipes".

We continue our editorial coverage of the broadband over powerline (BPL) controversy with a letter from Ed Hare, Laboratory Manager of the ARRL (American Radio Relay League). The ARRL has be the most vocal opponent we’ve seen to BPL and, in this article, we give their technical expert the opportunity to discuss the issue.

By now, everyone who regularly reads Computing Unplugged has noticed that our summer editorial has been devoted to a single topic. We’ve been devoting our article-level coverage to a single, apparently obscure topic called broadband-over-powerline, otherwise known as BPL. Why? In this article, Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz explains why this issue is important for us all to understand.

We continue our in-depth coverage of the broadband over powerline (BPL) controversy. Is it a benign technology that can bring broadband to the unwired masses or is it a disaster waiting to happen? Here at Computing Unplugged, we honestly don’t know. The manufacturers have a heck of a story to tell, but if you read analysis by technical experts, like this one from engineer Bill South, you get an entirely different perspective.

Wow! All I can say is "Wow"! We ran what seemed like a perfectly innocuous interview with an expert on what seemed like a perfectly innocuous topic: broadband over powerline (BPL). It seemed like the perfect no-brainer: more broadband, no extra wires, and high-speed Internet to countries with no other infrastructure. Apparently, not everyone agrees.

We continue our examination of broadband over powerline technology this week in the second part of our exclusive interview with Chano Gomez, one of the leading experts on this technology.

Broadband technology is changing at a wildly accelerated pace. Whether it’s EvDO technology in your new Treo 700p or WiFi in your local coffee shop, it’s clear Internet access is leaving POTS (Plain Ol’ Telephone System) connections behind. One of the most exciting areas of innovation is broadband over powerline (BPL) technology, which distributes high-speed Internet connectivity over your household powerlines. We examine BPL in-depth this week in a detailed, exclusive interview with Chano Gomez, one of the leading experts on this technology.