[AReU] BPL article rebuttal letter.

[Tony Stone]

Subject: [Mw] Letter to the Editor, Wall Street Journal

14612 Dowling Drive
Burtonsville, Maryland
March 26, 2004


Editor, The Wall Street Journal

Dear Sir:

Your front page article of March 23 "In This Power Play, 
High-Wire Act Riles Ham-Radio Fans, New Use for Lines 
Sparks Tension With Operators" reads like a press release 
from those utility companies who wish to promote the
questionable use of electric power lines for residential 
broadband internet service. Your attempt to denigrate 
this nations 700,000 ham radio licensees and their primary 
membership organization, the American Radio Relay League, is
a pathetic piece of journalism and demonstrates a complete 
lack of effort to research the opposing point of view. 

Your article portrays hams as an aging group holding on 
to an obsolete technology of "dots and dashes" and shows 
an extreme ignorance of all that modern ham radio has to 
offer. Today's hams are experimenting with digital
communications modes, software defined radios and other 
cutting edge communications technologies. We have a far 
deeper and richer mastery of electronics technology than 
99 percent of the computer programmers who inhabit
the internet and who really have no understanding of the 
underlying electronic technology that their software runs 
on. Hams are also in general a nicer group of people than 
the hackers, spammers, scam artists, virus writers and
pornographers who inhabit the internet. 

Hams have built and launched more than 50 communications 
satellites into Earth orbit, the first of these in 1961, 
six months before the first commercial Telstar satellite. 
A subset of hams have mastered the technology needed to
bounce radio signals off of the moon. There was a ham radio 
station onboard the Russian space station MIR and there is 
currently one onboard the International Space Station. 
A significant percentage of the US astronaut corps have 
ham licenses, including three of the seven astronauts who 
died aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia last year.

Amateur radio is not just a silly game. The contests and 
activities that hams engage in do have a serious side, 
they serve as practice and preparation for the day when 
emergency communications services will be needed. A great many
recent instances of natural and man made disasters have shown 
the ability of amateur radio communications to function when 
other systems fail. Cellular telephones and the internet depend 
on heavy infrastructure investments that can be overloaded or 
rendered inoperative in a major emergency. Ham radio, by
its simple nature, is not dependent on complex and expensive 
infrastructure. Many cell phone towers do not even have 
emergency battery backup anymore, as a cost saving measure. 

On September 11, 2001 the cell phone networks in New York 
and Washington crashed under the strain of heavy use. Ham 
radio operators were able to communicate. During last summers 
electrical blackout many cell phone systems were out of 
commission. Hams maintained communications during Hurricane 
Andrew and many other natural disasters. Hams have had a formal 
relationship with FEMA, its Civil Defense predecessors and the 
Red Cross for over 60 years.

Last year hams were extremely helpful to authorities in 
searching for debris from the Space Shuttle Columbia in remote 
areas of Texas. Their simple equipment could communicate in 
wilderness areas where more sophisticated police communications 
systems would not function. During the 1991 coup attempt
in the Soviet Union, ham radio operators on the ground kept the 
MIR cosmonauts apprised of the true situation in their home 
country, when Soviet Mission Control would not tell them any news 
because of political reasons. When Saddam Hussen's troops invaded 
Kuwait, many of the news stories "smuggled out of Kuwait"  were 
transmitted by ham radio operators in that country. This was
kept secret at the time because hams worldwide were in fear for 
their colleagues' lives under Iraqi military occupation. When 
the US military invaded/liberated Grenada in 1983, our troops 
had to use commercial telephone calling cards to make contact 
with the Pentagon, while hams in Grenada kept the world informed. 
One ham's report was carried live on ABC's "Nightline".

In spite of this rich history, your writer chooses to remain 
ignorant of the facts and portrays us as a bunch of obsolete 
old fogies who can't adjust to changing times.

Measurements of radio interference in locations where Broadband 
over Power Lines (BPL) technology has been deployed clearly do 
show a harmful level of radio interference. Measurements made 
by companies with a financial stake in the deployment of BPL are 
far more suspect than our own measurements are. Interference from 
BPL in residential areas will affect not only licensed radio
amateurs but also citizens band radio operators and anybody who 
listens to international shortwave broadcasts.

Your own article contradicts itself. The second and third 
paragraphs clearly indicate that your reporter observed harmful 
radio interference in an area served by BPL but then you go on 
to claim that interference is no problem and the hams are just 
complaining for the sake of making noise.

The fact that ARRL has raised $300,000 from 5,600 donors would 
indicate an average donation of $53 per person. This grass 
roots campaign is far more democratic than the much greater 
sum of money that will be spent to purchase influence in 
Washington by the companies who wish to promote their
questionable technology. 

We are not trying to stop the growth of the internet, but we ask 
that it be done in a responsible manner. Cable modems, DSL service 
and eventually fiber optic links can provide residential broadband 
service in a socially responsible manner without trashing the 
radio spectrum. I am sure that many products and services could 
be delivered to consumers at lower cost if environmental and 
pollution controls were lifted so that manufacturers could
dump their waste products into the nations lakes, rivers and 
air without restriction.

Allowing BPL companies to pollute the radio spectrum that is 
shared by all citizens in the name of slightly cheaper internet 
service is not a defensible position. We feel that the FCC, like 
many government agencies today, has been co-opted by corporate 
interests and no longer works for the best interests of the 
citizens of this country. In contrast the communications 
authorities in Japan have decided not to allow BPL technology 
to be used in their country. 

Simple economic theory taught in many schools indicates that 
it is not responsible behavior to shift costs to innocent third 
parties for the benefit of one particular group. We wish to 
preserve the existence of amateur radio in the 21st century 
so that it will be available to the younger generation when
they grow tired of playing games and writing software on their 
computers and decide to seek out a real technical challenge.

Daniel Schultz
Burtonsville, Maryland

FCC assigned call sign: N8FGV
E-mail: n8fgv@amsat.org