[QCWA] It's official... we are secondary.

[Paul L. Schmidt]

Norm Gertz wrote:
> ITF writes " I do not think it matters whose in the White House "
> 
> Sorry old man.....it sure does matter.  All the top brass of the FCC are 
> political appointees......you could easily question the expertise of 
> many of them.
> 
> They do the bidding of those who have placed them in office.
> 
> 73   Norm    K1AA

Sure, it does.  But take a look at the question from the political
perspective -- the interests of a nation of about a half billion
people, many of which (by the way, myself included) don't have access
to high-speed internet access - compared to the interests of under
a million people -- with the (regulated) power industry telling the 
government that they can, indeed, provide such service to the large
group with minimal or no impact on the small group.

We're still the primary users of the spectrum, although with the
position not nearly as strong as it has been.  The FCC'a given the
power industry permission to go ahead with something that isn't
going to work as advertised. But when the power industry is bearing
the financial risk in a market that has competetion from providers
who actually *can* provide service to the customers, what are they
supposed to do?

Yes, I think the FCC blew this one.  But I think the ones who are
eventually going to be complaining the loudest are the power companies -
when their customers call up to have BPL disconnected and replaced with
a competitor's service due to poor performance.  And we've been down
this interference-from-wired-services road before in many areas -- with
cable TV systems.

The R&O is requiring the power industry to keep all of their deployment
information out in the open - that at least gives us a fighting chance
(or, reversing the phrase around, a chance to fight).  The ARRL's petiton
for reconsideration is a good start, but our best long-term chances may be
with local hams monitoring (policing?) the local BPL implementations.
Maybe the ARRl should set up a website to collect and track BPL
complaints?  If John Q. Ham could just go type in an interference
location on a website, instead of having to initiate a formal complaint
with the FCC, I'd bet enough complaints could be collected (and, of
course, verified by some trained volunteers) to totally bury the
issue.

On the other hand, what if the power companies are telling the truth?
What if it really *can* work?  (Time to look out the window and see
if there are any flying pigs going by.)

73,

Paul / K9PS