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| Too funny..... Everytime BPL comes up for discussion, it always degenerates into the wants of the broadband community with the needs of the HAM community.
It usually starts off with the "anti-HAM" crowd going off about how internet service is more important and HAM radio needs to die since they no longer useful.
Then, the HAMs come in defending their hobby and how the BPL companies have to follow the rules set down by the FCC.
What is so funny is that if BPL interfered with someone's TV or radio, you would have people up in arms, with pitchforks and torches, marching down to the FCC and/or power company demanding that BPL be shut down for the common good. 
More that 90% of the anti-HAM crowd does nothing but hurl insults, spout off moronic statements, and state dubious facts to discredit those that try to make the BPL providers follow the law.
If you are going to go up against the HAMs, you need to do your homework. Most of us are quite educated. We know the law, we know our frequencies, we know how things work. 
Here are some more facts for the pro-BPL crowd to choke on:
1. Not all BPL systems pollute the HF spectrum. The system in Manassas does but some do not.
2. BPL is Part 15 rules, Amatuer Radio is Part 97. Look it up in the Federal Code of Regulations if you don't know what that means.
3. BPL is NOT being deployed to rural areas.
4. HAM radio is still used in emergency and disaster communication. Cells phones don't work long without power or telephone lines (and backup power doesn't last that long either.) Sat phones cost way too much for regular people to afford. | |
| I think we are missing the big picture here .. hams are but a very small portion that is being interfered with... aircraft commercial and private are in the vhf freq range...lots of law enforcement are still in the vhf range, military, ships, submarines in the low bands... really anyone with a radio on or above the frequency being used by BPL can be interfered with!!!..any frequency above the fundamental freq. is harmonically interfered with all the way up the bands...a wire long enough is pretty much resonate at abt any frequency.. you cannot beat a long BPL electric utility wire for a great radiating antenna!!! also egress/ ingress.. when the sunspot cycle starts I predict BPL will be useless anyway...anything that lets radiation out lets radiation in.....even if there were no hams on this planet the FCC would still have to shut down some BPL's if the FCC follows the regulation rules!!!! | |
| Other spectrum bands also contaminated. The HAMs are only a small subset of the users affected by the spectrum polluted by the bad BPL implementation. Currently they appear to be the most vocal.
Even though the HAMs are a very tiny sliver of the affected spectrum. Please see »www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.pdf a chart of spectrum uses. They play their own important roll, and they may understand the issue better than many commercial or public users. But the non-HAM users are just as affected. If I am paying thousands dollars a year for business band channel licenses, I am not going to want to have that interfered with.
The BPL contaminated spaces are also affecting things like the business band, EMS/police frequencies, marine/aircraft operations, cellular and mobile, and even broadcast television and radio. Do you want the ambulance that you called not go get dispatched because BPL was leaking RF and they could not receive their orders?
So if speculatively you have a poor BPL implementation contaminating everything from 100mhz to 200mhz; in there you have aeronautical radio navigation (108 – 117 mhz), aviation radio (117 – 137mhz), misc Uses, sat, mobile (138 – 144mhz), HAMs (144 – 149mhz), business band, fixed mobile, maritime communications, police and EMS (150 -174mhz), television channels 7 – 13 (174 – 216 mhz). What do we tell those [licensed] users, too bad, Joe Sixpack needs BPL to download his internet porn? | | |
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| The amateur community understands the issues and is free to comment, tough to speak up when you are government employee.
Other users have placed their trust to keep the spectrum clean in the hands of the FCC, a duty in which the FCC has totally failed.
A transoceanic airline pilot has never heard of BPL he/she just expects to turn on their HF radio and be in contact. Being 2,000 miles from land and out of contact is not good news when you are responsible for 450 people. | |
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