| said by Dusty101568 :
Just a couple of questions so I can understand the argument a little better.
1) How many freq's can ham operate on?
In the HF bands (1-30 Mhz) which BPL can affect, Amateur Radio has nine bands totalling 3.75 Mhz.
2) Does BPL interfere on ALL freq's or can Ham's just
change to another freq to continue there hobby/communications?
It depends on the brand of BPL system and how the local operator has configured it. I've seen some that blanket 1 - 30 Mhz. Others pick and chose 3-5 Mhz wide bands in various places. BPL systems need more spectrum to provide more bandwidth, so they will need more frequencies as time goes on.
Different frequency bands have different characteristics throughout the day and during solar events, so it's not as simple as just moving to another band. It's like when you want to watch your football team play on a TV channel, but the channel is out and someone tells you to go watch baseball on another channel.
Seems like I read something about notching freqs.
3)If BPL notched some of the possible freq's for Hams, could they co-exist?
Yes and no, it's dependent on the depth of the notch. Some manufacturers consider -20dB to be a sufficient notch, while in practice a notch depth of -40dB is a more realistic need. Some manufacturers turn on notches by default, others don't. As the system is notched, end user bandwidth is reduced, so notching is at odds with providing service. However, if all manufacturers notched by default with good -40dB notches, there probably would be few problems for amateurs. This, of course, doesn't address the problems with the other 90% of the spectrum users.
Why does it have to be ALL OR NONE?
It depends who you're asking the question. BPL providers will want more spectrum, especially once they start pushing 200Mbs BPL. But BPL is a wired network. There is no other wired network in the world that ruins wireless spectrum. If BPL actually used the spectrum rather than polluting it, they could conceivable ask for wireless spectrum. While this is out of the question since it's a wired network, assume for the moment they could petition for spectrum. At best they could expect to get 1 or 2 Mhz since most of the spectrum is allocated to government, military, aeronautical, maritime, and international uses. This amount of spectrum could deliver perhaps 4 Mbs of bandwidth. Even eliminating ham radio and giving the 3.75 Mhz of HF spectrum to BPL would yield a meager 7.5 Mbs of bandwidth. So instead, the BPL industry has chosen to build a network under FCC Part 15, ignoring or moving the radiation problems as they arise, and will always be at odds with licensed wireless services. If BPL was the only way to deliver broadband, they might have a leg to stand on. But despite seven or eight years of development and three years of intense, well-funded lobbying in the United States, BPL is serving only about 4,000 customers. Cable and DSL adds more subscribers each day than BPL has in its entire lifetime.
Amateurs have dealt with interference for decades, especially point-source power transmission noise and noise from consumer devices. BPL is a different animal, however. It's really the only type of interference that is on 24x7x365, and it's emanating from perhaps the "best" distributed antenna system, power lines. This makes the interference inescapable. FCC Part 15 rules were written for small, point-source type interference from consumer devices and have worked reasonable well over the years. BPL is operating under these rules which are totally inappropriate for a wideband, large geographical interferer like BPL.
Regardless of the value of Amateur Radio you may or may not perceive, it still provides both educational and recreational value for millions internationally, and there's a public service component as well. Amateur Radio spectrum is one of the few wireless resources dedicated to the general public and not private interests. Imagine how upset folks would be if the unlicensed 802.11 2.4 Ghz band available for general public use was made useless by a private corporate interest in an entire community. |
