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 Previous: Amateur Radio Support Winds Down as Isabel Recovery Continues |  Next: Hundreds Comment on Morse Petitions |
By David Sumner, K1ZZ
ARRL Chief Executive Officer
October 1, 2003
Editor's note: Typically, only ARRL members get to read the "It Seems to Us ..." editorials that run each month in QST. We're posting this editorial that appears in the October 2003 issue of QST in the hope that both ARRL members and nonmembers might appreciate it and find it informative.
Remember Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf? By name, you probably don't. He is the former Iraqi Information Minister, more commonly referred to in the Western media as "Comical Ali" or "Baghdad Bob," who achieved his 15 minutes of fame by insisting that there were no American troops in Baghdad long after the world knew it simply wasn't true. He was able, with a straight face, to deny evidence that was right in front of his nose.
Judging from the public record in the FCC's Notice of Inquiry on Broadband over Power Lines (BPL), several industry representatives possess the same talent as Baghdad Bob. Here are some quotes that rank right up there with "I triple guarantee you, there are no American soldiers in Baghdad."
"While it may appear counterintuitive, higher emissions limits for BPL may tend to minimize the impact on other users. Higher limits would enable electric utilities and their service partners to construct BPL systems at lower expense and with higher throughput. This will enable them to sign up more customers faster. The sooner they do, the sooner they will extend fiber to serve those customers, converting portions of their systems from RF to photonic technology."--Comments of Electric Broadband, by its attorneys.
"[C]onsiderable noise already is indigenous in the vicinity of the power lines existing independently of the BPL operation, and this noise does not cause harmful interference."--Comments of Attorneys for Ameren Energy Communications Inc.
"PPL Telcom believes that the arguments raised by amateur radio forums...do not provide any direct evidence that BPL vendors' technologies cause interference in excess of approved limitations established by FCC guidelines."--Comments of Counsel for PPL Telcom, LLC. (We can't resist two observations. First, the initials PPL remind us that in view of the events of August 14 it might be better for the industry to spend more time worrying about how to deliver PPL--Power over Power Lines--and less on BPL. Second, PPL Telcom operates the system in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, where our tests disclosed the following: "In Emmaus, ARRL found very strong to severe interference to reception all across the HF range. In the area of underground wiring, when a test download was made at one location, ARRL heard strong interference. In the area of overhead wiring, a very strong BPL signal was heard everywhere the mobile station was driven in the areas of overhead lines." The presence of interference has been corroborated independently by Carl Stevenson, WK3C, a resident of Emmaus.)
"BPL devices are point-source emitters. The entire power line does not act like an antenna ...and BPL signals do not propagate well."--Comments of Current Technologies, LLC, by Counsel.
The Reply Comments are even better, as they were written after the ARRL had filed its extensive comments and technical showings. Here's a good one:
"[N]either ARRL nor the individual commenters provide any technical support for their argument that Access BPL cannot operate in bands used by amateur radio licensees ....The volume of comments filed by amateur radio licensees is largely reflective of a concerted effort by ARRL to inflate concern over BPL interference without demonstrated instances of interference or sound technical reasons to believe interference will occur."--Southern Linc, Southern Telecom, Inc, and Southern Company Services, Inc, by their attorneys. (Another note: Southern saw fit to mention how much money the ARRL had raised for defense against BPL--money that, of course, has come from the personal pockets of private citizens who are trying to protect something that is priceless to them. We wonder how much the Southern companies have paid their attorneys--the evidence suggests that it's more than they have paid any competent RF engineers.)
Southern goes on to say, with regard to shortwave broadcasting: "Shortwave signals that arrive here are weak to begin with, since they may originate many thousands of miles away.... Given the vagaries of shortwave reception, it is not realistic to seek to "protect" such reception beyond the normal protection afforded to all radio services by operation of Part 15 of the Commission's rules. Banning BPL altogether, as requested by broadcasters and listeners, is no more practical than banning sunspots or seasons." (Our first observation is that the shortwave broadcasting signals they say they can't protect are tens of dB stronger than the amateur signals that we routinely use for effective communication. Second, banning BPL altogether is entirely practical, and apparently necessary inasmuch as its proponents haven't a clue about the nature of the unique natural resource their system would be polluting.)
It would have been so easy for somebody in one of these companies to say, "Hey, go down to RadioShack and buy a shortwave radio. Then take it out to our test site, turn it on, and see if our BPL interferes with reception. If it does, I guess we'll have to look for somewhere else to spend our investors' money."
Fortunately, we are not alone in pointing out BPL's fatal flaw. In its Reply Comments, ARINC, Inc, the communications company of the air transport industry, reports that it had to abandon the use of a frequency at its Half Moon Bay, California, facility because of interference from a Part 15 device that could be five miles away and that the FCC has been unable to locate. So much for the lack of interference complaints or the ease of resolving them under existing Part 15 regulations--the regulations that the BPL industry wants relaxed even further.
Like Baghdad Bob, BPL soon will have
had its 15 minutes of fame and will fade from memory--if the FCC pays attention
to sound technical arguments. There are others who should be paying even closer
attention: those who bankroll technology ventures. The ones who haven't already
gone broke should be able to smell a loser--after all, they have plenty of
recent experience.
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