FCC fails to follow established procedure

[KB3LIX]

The following is a snip from the ARRL website.

This decision was rendered by the US District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
The entire text of the decdision is posted within the original article on the ARRL site.

The Court said, "We grant the [ARRL's] petition in part and remand the rule to the Commission. The Commission failed to satisfy the notice and comment requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act ("APA") by redacting studies on which it relied in promulgating the rule and failed to provide a reasoned explanation for its choice of the extrapolation factor for measuring Access BPL emissions."

We knew the commission acted improperly, now to see where this goes.
It could get interesting.

[NN3W]

The decision is a mixed bag. The CADC rejected the League's Part 15 argument. However, the CADC did stick its finger in the FCC's eye for 1) basing the majority of its final rule on reports that were not made available for comment and 2) for failing to say word one about the three non-FCC studies that were critical of BPI.

The judges reviewed the 5 FCC studies/reports in camera and the clear inference from both the opinion and the concurring opinion is that the FCC studies have some rather unflattering things to say about BPL deployment and the ability of BPL operators to reduce harmful interference. The concurrence is very enlightening on this - "I agree that the appropriate course is to remand the case with an order to disclose the entire studies on which the Commission relied—warts and all."

Its going to get interesting. And, this is your ARRL dollars at work...

[K0RGR]

We'll see where this goes from here, but it looks like FCC has received a tongue-lashing, at least. The BPL rules go back for reconsideration.

These days, the government is very proud of its' warts whenever they please the political base of the jackals in control.

[NN4RH]

Basically, as far as I can tell, the court agreed with the FCC's rules regarding interference to mobile operations and disagreed with the ARRL's argument against it. So this decision will not have any impact on BPL interference with mobile operation.

[ai4ep]

well, at least the rule breakers and violators will have a field month ( at least ) while the FCC is busy straightening out THIS mess and not enforcing their own radio rules.

These are simple folk who cant handle more than one thing at a time....this is YOUR federal government.