FCC ACTS ON BPL

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***1 - FCC moves forward with NPRM for BPL***
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SOURCE - ARRL
URL - http://www.arrl.org
12 February 2004.
© ARRL
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***BPL PROPOSAL APPROVED BY FCC***

ARRL Officials Express Disappointment (Feb 12, 2004) --

The FCC today agreed unanimously--with one partial
dissent--to go forward with a Notice of Proposed Rule Making
(NPRM) on the subject of Broadband over Power Line (BPL).

The NPRM is the next step in the BPL proceeding, which
began last April with a Notice of Inquiry that attracted
more than 5100 comments--many from the amateur
community.

The FCC did not propose any changes in Part
15 rules governing unlicensed devices, but said it would
require BPL providers to apply "adaptive" interference
mitigation techniques to their systems.

An ARRL delegation attended the FCC open meeting in Washington,
and League President Jim Haynie, W5JBP, expressed
disappointment with the FCC's decision.
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[K0RGR]

I don't know yet if this is a good thing or a bad one. At least under Part 15 rules, they're not supposed to interfere with us.

We're anticipating a BPL trial here soon, so I suspect I will be finding out first hand. ARRL has offered assistance and our local radio club is pursuing it as professionally as possible.

[KG4CGC]

require BPL providers to apply "adaptive" interference
mitigation techniques to their systems.




Sounds more like the radio nazis coming to your shack to tell you to quit interfering with "their customers" internet. Sorry guys, that where I see "adaptive interference mitigation techniques" leading to. Mitigation with large corporations usauly means, "Our way, We have a right to make money, Get out of our way, We are professionals and you don't know what you're talking about, Say hello to our attorney Mr. Ripyourguts".
Am I reading this wrong or does anyone else feel this way? If Ralph Nader had more credibility I would say get him involved in this fight. Right now I notice a lot of people have a love hate relationship with the ARRL.
73 de KG4CGC, Charles

[KI4BOO]

Too bad we all can't cancel our memberships to the FCC...

What really could the ARRL do about this? We all know money dictates government decisions... The ARRL continues to fight BPL, but they don't have ALL that much money. After all, they are losing memberships due to people becoming unhappy with them on other issues.

Not to mention we're all cheap bastards who won't donate to the cause.

All that has to happen now is BPL to become a service that is licensed by the FCC and not Part 15, and we're screwed. Expect that to happen soon...

[N3OMQ]

I think a question that has not been answered is if we (the Amateur Radio community) interfere with BPL operations as part of our normal communcation using authorized power and frequencies; what are the ramifications to BPL end users and the power company?

Secondly, does an HF transmission of 100w in close proximity to a BPL enabled line and equipment have adverse effects to the BPL data stream. I'm thinking front-end overload and/or packet loss. The example I am thinking that would cause end-user pain would be a general rag-chew session in which the "interfering" party was a long-winded talker with lots of power out and say 5 minutes of 100% packet loss. As an internet user I would be calling my ISP after 2 minues, so then will the power company complain to the FCC that an Amateur is causing interference to a part 15 device that the FCC has said is "important to the growth of the Internet" ??

Where will that leave us?

[K3UD]

Several possible outcomes:

1. Service providers spend billions setting up service via BPL to large parts of the country. Immediate problems manifest themselves such as licensed services in the HF region begin tripping the system off or otherwise degrading the system to the point where its users complain loudly to the service providers. These providers go the FCC and Congress telling them that they want their investments to be protected and to "do something" about the interference that licensed services are causing. The FCC decides to changes the rules and this ends Amateur Radio as we know it.

2. Same scenario as above except that the FCC tells the service providers that, Hey, we told you that you needed filters, we told you that your system had to accept interference and not interfere with licensed services, and we told you that we were not going to change Part 15 rules. You told us that you could handle these requirements…. TOUGH.

3. The who thing degrades into guerrilla warfare between licensed services and the end user of the technology, kind of like it did with the TVI battles when television became standard in most homes. Hams get sued, consumers lobby city councils to pass interference ordinances, and failing that, take a page from the CC&R book and get cities and towns to make zoning changes which deny private owners of transmitters above a certain power output level to use them. (I actually saw this in the covenants of a new subdivision)
Failing that, they go after antennas via ordinance route, and failing that we get into things like cutting feedlines and physical confrontation. Maybe the FCC washes its hands and allows local governments to regulate in this way.

4. Service providers, after a few brief BPL installations realize that they can not meet the technical requirements but spend some R&D money to come up with an alternative which operates in the microwave region. Another possibility might be that with all the up front capital needed, the rates will not be competitive with DSL and Cable resulting in very little customer base in the cities and towns, and limiting the customer base in rural regions where the consumer just will not pay what is required to get faster service than dial up.

There are probably many more outcomes, these are my top picks.

73
George
K3UD

[K3STX]

Hmmmm, the BPL people provide MONEY to the FCC/government and the Ham radio community does not.

Who do YOU think will win?

And yes, a 100 watt transmitter will cut out the Internet access over BPL to your neighbors (so I'm told). Believe me, it this happens all over the country the part of the Regulations that says "We must accomodate the other radio operators" will be scrapped to read "Ham radio operators must NEVER interfere with BPL operations."

It will be the TVI story of the 1960s/1970s all over again, but in this case there will be nothing we can do (since the problem is not our rigs). Forget code/no-code or auto-upgrade of Techs, BPL could be the end of Ham radio as we know it. (Not the effect of BPL on our receivers, but the effect of our transmitters on the BPL!!&#33

paul

[WB2WIK]

I'm hoping this turns out to be a very expensive experiment for utility companies/service providers.

If we can hear them, they'll also hear us. Whether ordinary CW/SSB or even AM/FM or digital signals actually shut them down or not remains to be seen, but there are enough ham programmers/hackers around to determine what does shut them down, pretty quickly.

Kevin Mitnick, where are you?

WB2WIK/6

[WA3KYY]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (WB2WIK @ Feb. 13 2004,09:13)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I&#39;m hoping this turns out to be a very expensive experiment for utility companies/service providers.

If we can hear them, they&#39;ll also hear us. #Whether ordinary CW/SSB or even AM/FM or digital signals actually shut them down or not remains to be seen, but there are enough ham programmers/hackers around to determine what does shut them down, pretty quickly.

Kevin Mitnick, where are you?

WB2WIK/6[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
Actually it has already been documented in some of the technical filings to the NOIin studies done both here and in other countries. 10 Watts SSB on 20M within 100 or so feet of an Access Point is sufficient to degrade throughput. 100 Watts causes the device to shut down and need to be reset either by remote signal or field service personnel. This has been shown to be the case in a CA town where BPL is being deployed large scale.

Because of the power differences, licensed HF users can cause problems for BPL at greater distances than BPL can to the HF users. Think 1500W and a beam antenna. What I don&#39;t know is if shifting the bandpass of the BPL devices out of the amateur frequencies makes them less susceptible to interference.

73,
Mike

[KC7RS]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">The FCC did not propose any changes in Part
15 rules governing unlicensed devices, but said it would
require BPL providers to apply &quot;adaptive&quot; interference
mitigation techniques to their systems.[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>

Ok, so they hop away from frequencies that they are experiencing interference on. #This will do nothing to mitigate interference of their radiated signals to our receivers. #That says a lot about where their priorities lie.