[CW] BPL

[Bill Owens N2RKL]

On Sat, Jul 12, 2003 at 07:03:28PM +0000, Donald Chester wrote:
> How much "protection" do we get from the existing Part 15 rules? 

In principle, any licensed service has absolute priority over any
Part 15 device. As we know, in practice it is different :( And the BPL
industry is already agitating for "accomodations" between licensed and
unlicensed users. They objected two ways to the recent FCC NPRM on new
amateur bands, saying that their Part 15 low-frequency communications
system was too important to allow a licensed user to interfere with
it, and that BPL was so important that it should have a "safe harbor"
against new amateur allocations. The FCC agreed with the first but not
the second, though of course we didn't get a 5 MHz band anyway.

My greater fear is that even if there are no changes to the Part 15
rules for BPL devices, their ubiquity will mean that we have no way to
shut them down when they do interfere. Worse still, we're going to face
some serious pressure when *we* interfere with them. I get along well
with my neighbors now, but I don't know how they'd react if every time
I got on the air their email stopped working. And I don't think it is
too much of a stretch to imagine CCRs (which are written by developers,
who are in turn liable to be influenced by the utilities) banning not
just antennas but amateur transmitters. Perhaps the FCC would be willing
to step in on that, but so far they've refused to touch the CCR issue.

In their comments on the 5 MHz NPRM, the UPLC "urges the Commission to
defer action on it until such time as its impact on Broadband PLC can
be fully assessed.  A thorough assessment of the impact would permit the
Commission to make a balanced decision of the interests of all the users
licensed and unlicensed   in the band.  It could lead to an accommodation
between amateur and PLC operations in the band". They go on to request
power limits and antenna restrictions (which we got, though supposedly
for different reasons).

> Imagine living next door to a house equipped with one or two of these 
> things in every room.

. . . and having high-pass filters installed on all the distribution
transformers so that all the RFI from the touch switches leaks out
through the entire neighborhood. But perhaps people will get rid of the
switches if they interfere with their shiny new BPL service. Then again,
if we get BPL we might wish for touch switches :(

Bill N2RKL