BPL's Perfect Storm: VoWiFi

And that is a lot of acronyms in the title. Broadband over powerline -- a technology we have all heard about forever but never seems to get off of the ground. Perhaps the main reason it never seems to go anywhere is that we all (most of us anyway) already have two options for broadband running into our homes -- cable and DSL. Or perhaps it is because power companies are conservative, slow-moving, unable to innovate...

But I predict that this is all about to change. An opportunity too great to overlook that power companies are in a unique position to take advantage of is coming down the technology turnpike at breakneck speed -- Voice over IP over WiFI. Why the roadway metaphor? Think about what the power companies have in addition to a line running into every home -- a pole (with power) every few meters down every street.

Sure, you could have put Wi-Fi APs on the tops of those poles some time ago. And every geek with a laptop balanced on a mailbox could have been posting to his (sorry, or her) blog wirelessly. But many more people talk on phones as they roam... and with a plethora of VoWiFi devices expected in the next 12 months, demand for wireless IP access on unlicensed spectrum will explode...

Just in time! The broadband over powerline guys are ready to make this technology sing. APs every few poles will bring about a revolution in mobile communications, making VoWiFi as ubiquitous as cell phones -- but at a fraction of the cost. And the services that can be offered to subscribers will put efforts such as EV-DO to shame.

So what's holding up the power companies now?

Covad latest to launch VoIP

Back in March of this year, Covad purchased Go-Beam for $48 million. So it was no surprise when they announced on Tuesday that they plan national VoIP rollout. Perhaps the only question is, who WON'T be offering VoIP? The ISPs are, the cable companies are, the long distance telcos are, the RBOCs are, I am, you are... do I even NEED a VoIP provider? Or is it just an application running on my desktop and mobile device that connects directly to an application on your desktop or mobile device... do I really need another bill from another utility? And government regulation to boot?

New Storage Device

The team at Digitimes reports that a new type of storage device will soon be rolling out of factories in Taiwan. This has the potential of transforming a wide variety of devices. Increasingly I am also seeing memory cards used in network devices as a kind of EPROM replacement with the full OS and network software installed -- makes for a fast boot time an an easy upgrade process.


The new devices have a maximum memory of 2T -- not in itself unusual, Sony has had this capability in its memory sticks for awhile. More interesting is the high transfer speed -- 120 MBs

Expanded Beta for pulver.Communicator

I haven't posted on my tests of the pulver.Communicator, but it has been going well -- more on that later.

Jeff Pulver writes:

The pulver.Communicator team is looking to expand the number of people testing what will be known as Beta II of pulver.Communicator.

The pulver.Communciator team would appreciate it if you would consider recommending some of your friends/family to join in our beta test. To join our beta test, please share the URL: http://pulver.com/fwd/beta-signup.html and in the field that asks "How did you find out?" please tell your friends/family to reference your name or email address.

Tell them IP Inferno sent you!