ARRL Staffer Testifies on BPL at California Hearing

NEWINGTON, CT, Feb 16, 2005--ARRL staff member Dean Straw, N6BV, testified February 8 in San Francisco at a California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) public hearing on broadband deployment. In his nearly six-minute testimony on the draft policy decision crafted by CPUC member Susan P. Kennedy, "Broadband Deployment in California," Straw--an electrical engineer and an ARRL senior assistant technical editor--decried the fact that the section of the document dealing with broadband over power line (BPL) neglected to mention the technology's disadvantages.

"I feel there is additional work necessary on the sections dealing with broadband over power line--BPL," Straw testified. Calling the broadband deployment proposal "an otherwise well-executed document" that presents fair and balanced cases for other broadband technologies, it lacks any discussion of BPL's downside, only the "pros" of the technology, he said.

"There is not a single mention made of the three most significant disadvantages of BPL," Straw continued. These, he said, include interference from BPL to radio receivers, interference to BPL from radio transmitters and a lack of bandwidth for expansion, especially in instances where BPL interference must be mitigated in some fashion.

Referring to a recently announced BPL field trial in San Diego, Straw offered the League's expertise in assisting with the evaluation. He also noted that a BPL pilot project in Menlo Park, California, was scrapped just months after FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell visited the site to tout the technology's prospects. Straw said many engineers believe it was the prospect of having to deal with BPL's interference potential that doomed the Pacific Gas and Electric/AT&T joint venture.

"We are not opposed to Internet broadband services," Straw maintained on behalf of the Amateur Radio community at large. "We're not categorically opposed to Access BPL, but we are opposed categorically to interference."

Kennedy, who chaired the hearing, stopped Straw from reading into the record the CPUC's own cautious reply comments on the BPL proceeding, although she did say he could submit them to the Commission in writing.

In its reply comments last June, the CPUC, while generally supportive of encouraging more competition within the broadband industry, recommended the FCC "ensure that adequate testing is performed and industry standards are developed before any deployment takes place." The CPUC called BPL "a nascent service," and it noted "significant disagreement in the industry over the level of interference."

"The statements made by the CPUC in June of 2004 in reply comments to the FCC are now being--rather incautiously, I'd say--thrown to the wind," Straw declared. The attitude toward BPL in Kennedy's broadband deployment policy document, if adopted by the full commission in its present form, would represent a 180-degree shift from its position of less than a year earlier, he said.

The broadband policy Kennedy drafted calls for California to "encourage deployment of BPL by its electric utilities by providing regulatory certainty in the areas of its affiliate transaction rules, in the treatment of BPL program expenses and revenues, and exemption from Section 851 requirements for the use of utility assets." And it says the CPUC "should adopt this policy framework proactively without waiting for an application to be filed by an electric utility for a BPL project."

Straw said the broadband policy appears to represent "a wholesale embracing" of BPL. "I urge caution in that," he said. "There is still a great deal of science that has not been done on BPL in terms of interference and interference mitigation."

Straw said ARRL Southwestern Division Director Dick Norton, N6AA, and Pacific Division Director Bob Vallio, W6RGG, encouraged him to attend the hearing. His remarks came near the end of some seven hours of testimony, most of which Straw characterized as "sales presentations." His overall read of the comments by major industry representatives was that BPL "is definitely not a major player."

In December, the ARRL suggested that Kennedy temper her "excessively optimistic" view of BPL. In an interview for California Politics Today, Kennedy declared that it's "criminal that California does not have a major BPL pilot project or commercial project under way," and she vowed to see the CPUC do everything possible to change that. ARRL CEO David Sumner, K1ZZ, wrote Kennedy December 10 to raise the caution flag and offer the League's BPL expertise.

"It has yet to be demonstrated that BPL systems can be deployed without polluting the radio spectrum," Sumner told Kennedy. "Until this issue is resolved, we respectfully suggest that public statements that paint an excessively optimistic picture of BPL are inadvisable."

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