ARRL
Responds to Wall
Street Journal Article on BPL
 In his letter, Sumner suggested that there
are better choices than BPL, even from the standpoint of business and economics. |
NEWINGTON, CT, Mar 3, 2004--The ARRL has
responded to a March 2 Wall Street Journal article, "The Web's
New Outlet," that presented a one-sided, rosy picture of Broadband over Power
Line while avoiding any mention of its interference potential. ARRL CEO David
Sumner, K1ZZ, has faxed a letter to the editor of the New York-based business
and financial publication to point out some of BPL's shortcomings, which were
largely missing from the WSJ report.
"Any listing of the pros and cons of using
power lines to deliver broadband services must mention its major disadvantage:
it pollutes the radio spectrum, interfering with nearby radio receivers,"
Sumner said. "The only known exception is a microwave system being developed by
Corridor Systems of Santa Rosa, California."
Sumner pointed out that BPL involves sending
wideband RF "over unshielded wires that were not designed for the purpose."
Owing to the laws of physics, Sumner continued, these power lines function much
like antennas, and BPL signals passing through wires in the vicinity can
interfere with radio reception.
"The frequencies in question are used by
public safety agencies, the military, aeronautical and maritime services,
broadcasters, radio astronomers, radio amateurs, and others," Sumner noted. He
said BPL system designers have had only limited success in resolving the
interference issue by notching certain frequencies.
"Yet BPL implementation cannot go forward
without solving it, because for very good and obvious reasons it is a violation
of FCC regulations for a BPL system to cause radio interference," he went on. "If
BPL causes interference--and it does--the BPL system must be shut down." Sumner
included references to the ARRL's BPL Web
page, which documents HF interference the League monitored at four BPL
field test sites last fall.
"In his letter, Sumner suggested that there
are better choices than BPL, even from the standpoint of business and economics."
[Read the entire letter, 246,644 bytes, PDF file] |
|
The WSJ article, in the paper's "Marketplace"
section, focuses on the announcement this week of what's said to be the largest
rollout to date of BPL by Cincinnati-based utility Cinergy Corp and its BPL
partner Current Communications. Cinergy and Current Communications hope to be
offering the service to between 60,000 and 1.5 million Cincinnati-area
customers by year's end and eventually to some 24 million potential customers
elsewhere who are served by smaller utilities.
While the article concedes that BPL "is
unproven in wide use," it also cites FCC Office of Engineering and Technology
Chief Ed Thomas, who called the technology "ready for prime time." Thomas
stopped short of saying that the same was true for the BPL industry, however.
It also quotes Cinergy Executive Vice President Bill Grealis, who called BPL "the
last-mile solution" and said the service--at between $30 and $40 a month--would
be "cheaper and faster than DSL or cable."
In his letter, Sumner suggested that there
are better choices than BPL, even from the standpoint of business and economics.
"Potential investors in broadband delivery alternatives to DSL and cable would
be far better off considering the various methods of delivering fiber-to-the-home
in densely populated areas," he concluded. "For rural areas, adaptations of
wireless LAN technology are generally recognized as offering far more promise
than BPL."
Page last modified: 09:28 AM, 09 Mar 2004 ET
Page author: awextra@arrl.org
Copyright © 2004, American Radio Relay League, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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