Re: Noise!
"It's also an issue for anyone that likes to listen to longwave, distant AM broadcast band, or shortwave radio."
And there's more...
Who here knows how VDSL works (BT Infinity and friends, the so-called "superfast fibre broadband")? And its derivatives and follow-ons too.
Here's a hint. It's not fibre. From customer premises to street cabinet it's your plain old copper (hopefully) telephone wires. You may well have known that.
What may not have clicked is that VDSL is long, medium, and short wave radio **down the telephone wires** - the DSL standards use the same frequencies as the various AM broadcast bands (and more besides).
So wideband RF splatter stuff like PLT, that interferes with short wave radio, likely interferes with your DSL broadband too. Most of the time for most people it's not too bad, and proper "notching" has helped in a few specific narrow frequency bands. But as more Homeplug stuff is deployed, the general RF noise floor gets worse, which makes high speed DSL more difficult, especially in the presence of certain kinds of line faults. And heaven knows BT already have more than enough trouble with the commercial and technical issues of DSL faults.
"The DC to 30 MHz spectrum is a precious resource due to the natural long range nature of the propagation, and it's a darn shame that it's being polluted with so much unnecessary man made noise."
Amen to that, brother.
This PLT stuff isn't fit for proper CE approval. It's a scandal that it's even allowed to be sold. But BT plc wanted it on their "BT TV" list of parts, so they got it (much to the disgust of the BT plc DSL-related development people, who just make this stuff work, but don't generate any visible amount of direct revenue).