[SMCARA] BPL Meeting Summary

[A.J. Farmer (AJ3U)]

Hello all,

The SMECO BPL meeting was this morning.  There was a large turnout of about
50 or business representatives that were interested in the presentation
given by Tom Tudor of SMECO.  I have some good and bad news to report.

The bad news:
SMECO has been selected to serve as a host site for a performance pilot
project.  This pilot project will be publically announced at the end of this
month.

After a couple of years of research, SMECO is pushing to adopt a business
model that will permit them to do a tri-county wide rollout of BPL with the
focus on rural areas.  They currently are dealing with barriers which
include equipment quality, interference issues, and infrastructure.  If
these issues are adequately resolved, it looks like they will move forward.

There appears to be a lot of interest in this technology based on the
turnout and the questions that were asked after the presentation.

The good news:
BPL's impact on emergency communications, including the Amateur Radio
Service was actually part of the presentation which was a bit of a surprise.
SMECO appears to be taking these concerns seriously.  They are looking at
vendors that provide equipment that allow notching of frequencies.  SMECO's
plan is meet with all concerned parties including Amateurs, EMCOM, and the
U.S. Navy to understand what frequencies need to be notched out of their BPL
infrastructure.

One comment that was made, however, was very worrysome.  If I understood him
correctly, he said that "The FCC has expressed that Amateur Radio community
has not provided a coherent enough argument regarding interference from
BPL".  Again, I may not have understood this comment 100% correctly so don't
take that one to the bank...  He did mention that Michael Powell has been
pushing BPL very hard and we all know he is on his way out.  But I'm
digressing...

Some technical info:
BPL operates from 1MHz to 100MHz (yes, it is THAT WIDE!)
Repeaters are required every 2000 feet or so due to attenuation
BPL is a "last mile" technology.  SMECO has not decided exactly how they are
going to implement.  It may be from substation to substation.  It may only
be from transformer to house with the Internet arriving to the transformer
via some other technology.  This is still unclear.

Again, the good news is that SMECO appears to be amenable to the concerns of
local Amateurs at this stage in the game.  When they find out how much of
the spectrum we use, they might be surprised and change their tune but so
far it looks promising.  I think we do have the U.S. Navy as a potential
trump card in this, at least in St. Mary's county.  I'm sure the Navy
doesn't want HF polluted in this area.

I spoke with Tom Tudor after the meeting and expressed my concerns.  He is
willing to come and do a presentation and answer questions.  I think it
would be wise to set this up and I will pursue this with him.

73!

A.J. Farmer, AJ3U
http://www.aj3u.com