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 Previous: Foundation for Amateur Radio Announces 2007 Scholarship Winners |  Next: Surfin': If It Looks Like A Ducting... |
On July 24, FCC Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein testified at a House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet hearing that "three of the many urgent priorities we face" include the need for "a national broadband strategy to ensure the ubiquitous deployment of affordable, high speed broadband infrastructure to this country." FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and Commissioners Tate, McDowell and Copps testified as well at the "Oversight of the Federal Communications Commission" hearing.
ARRL Chief Executive Officer David Sumner, K1ZZ, responded via fax on July 25 to Commissioner Adelstein's remarks. "I cheered silently when I came to your reference to the 'current anemic definition of high-speed' that includes service that is too slow to meet citizens' reasonable expectations," he wrote. "I was even more impressed with your statement in the next paragraph, 'We must take a hard look at our successes and failures.'"
Sumner, however, expressed "great disappointment" over Adelstein's reference to "broadband over power line" (BPL) as "a technology deserving of 'increasing incentives for investment.' None of your colleagues' testimonies contain a similar reference," he pointed out.
Sumner reiterated the ARRL's position with regard to BPL technology and "its propensity to interfere with radio communication, a flaw that is not shared by other broadband delivery platforms. As long as interference is avoided," Sumner said, "it is of no concern to us whether private investment is devoted to BPL. However, we must object to your identification of BPL as a technology that is particularly deserving of favorable public policy treatment."
Calling the FCC's "inexplicable favoritism of BPL in the face of contrary evidence" one of the Commission's "failures," Sumner noted that according to the Commission's own latest figures, "of 64,600,000 'high-speed' lines, only about 5000 are BPL. This is a share of 0.008 percent, a share that actually declined in the six-month period between reports -- and if an 'anemic' definition were not used, none of the 5000 or so BPL lines would qualify."
ARRL's concern, Sumner said, at the "prospect of an even greater encouragement of BPL, as your testimony suggests, is that -- even at the very low level of deployment that exists to date -- the FCC's enforcement efforts have proved to be woefully inadequate to address ongoing cases of harmful interference from BPL systems."
Sumner went on to note "one example of documented interference (Enforcement Bureau File No. EB-06-SE-083) has been caused by the Ambient Corporation's Briarcliff Manor, New York installation for more than three years without being corrected and without penalty to the system operator…If the Commission is unable to protect its licensees from harmful interference from BPL now, it is difficult to imagine how it will be able to do so should BPL be more widely deployed in the future."
Sumner also attached a letter from William E. Burton, Chairman of the Public Safety and Security Committee of the Westchester County Board of Legislators. Burton's letter described the interference BPL is causing to local Amateur Radio operators in the village of Briarcliff Manor. He stressed that the FCC "should require that…Ambient cooperate with the ARRL and its BPL technical experts forthwith…This would include both the current experimental system, as well as any future or 'second generation' technology."
Burton's letter went on to say that "the best way for the FCC to promote a new technology while protecting public safety…[is to] make clear that complaints concerning harmful interference are taken seriously."
Sumner closed his comments by summarizing the ARRL's position: "We respectfully submit that BPL has not earned a place in the much-needed national broadband strategy to benefit all Americans. Resources are better devoted elsewhere, to more promising technologies that do not pose a threat to the Commission's radio service licensees."
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