The relationship between the FCC and ham operators has always been a contentious one, due to BPL's interference potential and the FCC's rather, uh, over-enthusiastic promotion of the flawed technology. As part of an effort to pretend their pro-incumbent policies resulted in something more than an uncompetitive duopoly, the agency used to call BPL the "great broadband hope." Hams have always alleged that the agency ignored interference data for the benefit of the BPL industry.

Interestingly, the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) has obtained and published on its website FCC studies it had obtained from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request it filed at the end of March. In October of 2007 the ARRL filed suit against the FCC, alleging that the FCC had held studies on BPL that may not have supported its own position on BPL until it was too late to comment on them. The FCC dismissed these documents as "internal communications" that did not factor in on its decision to adopt the BPL rules.

The FCC fought releasing the documents for years, until new FOIA rules implemented by the Obama administration finally resulted in the documents being released earlier this week. The studies show, among other things, that the FCC redacted, manipulated and ignored data in order to support their own position that power lines were perfectly suited to broadband, while ignoring advise from numerous providers and vendors in the sector.

That's in line with previous criticisms levied at the the way former FCC boss Kevin Martin ran the agency. In Martin's FCC, objective science and real data were an afterthought to political agendas or fealty to industry lobbyists. Even employees within the FCC complained that the agency had become a political animal that frequently ignored or violated the commission's own guidelines at the whims of Chairman Martin.

Unfortunately for Martin and the FCC, all of their BPL cheerleading efforts came to naught. With the recent closure of several of the technology's highest-profile trials, BPL exists as little more than a fringe player being used in very select rural locations to provide connectivity. Most of the BPL vendors the FCC was presumably working for have since moved on to promote smart electrical grid functionality.