New Visions - National Grid BPL for CNY - anyway to purchase? (Syracuse: power lines)

[visio]

Hi, just discovered that New Visions(nvplc.com) signed an agreement with National Grid to allow them to provide high speed broadband over the NG power lines... I hear it is doing pretty well in Syracuse...

A few questions hopefully someone can help on. #1. Anyone got inside info on how fast they are expanding so I can draw some ideas on when we might get service? This year, 5 years from now?

2. Is there anyway to contact National Grid and pay them or New Visions a certain amount of money to have them just service us... maybe I am ignorant on how this works but the way I understand it it costs only about $25 or so per house serviced which means the first month or so they get their investment back... so is this plausible? Or do I need to wait till they decide to cover our area?

BTW we are north of syracuse, only 20 miles from Vernon were they have serviced... so I am thinking it must be fairly inexpensive so that is why I am hoping there is someway we can get our house serviced even if they aren't working our area atm... any thoughts?

[TheWrathe]

No, your numbers are WAY off. So-called BPL isnt much different from FTTH in terms of cost. In fact, it is mostly a fiber play.

[ki0eh]

Here's a viewpoint on BPL: ARRLWeb: Broadband Over Power Line (BPL) and Amateur Radio (http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/ - broken link)

[Myrna123]

Bad, bad, bad, bad idea--bpl. What pisses me off is the state of ny is pissing away money in grants to new visions for a service whose technology is horse and buggy, interferes with licensed communications, isn't needed, and whose business model requires it to fail. I hope gov cuomo shuts down the steam of money that is being pissed away to new visions. The grant idea was for unserved areas. Syracuse certainly isn't unserved with fios, verizon dsl, time warner, cricket wireless internet, etc. Nys pisses away money on foolishness like new visions and we have to lay off teachers. How dumb!