Broadband's power-line push

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Tell both sides of the story

This technology relies on sending radio frequency signals over transmission lines that are designed and maintained to send signals much lower in frequency. Under these conditions, the power transmission line behaves like an antenna for the radio signals. Antennas radiate - they send the signal off into the ether.

These 'leaking' signals can and do cause interference to licensed radio services, including aviation, amateur radio, fire, safety, broadcast, and commercial two-way services. It is disingenious at best to imply that only ham radio operators and emergency services will be affected.

When interference occurs, the entity causing the interference will be required to take
any and all steps necessary to mitigate the interference, up to and including turning the system off until they are able to operate it without causing interference. This is because BPL is an FCC Part 15 service and the services that it is interfering with
are licensed services.

An even more insidious form of interference is possible as a direct result of the polllution that this technology causes. Shortwave signals propagate over a very broad area under certain circmustances. This is the basis of shortwave broadcasting - broadcasts originating in this country are frequently heard throughout the world. We hear broadcasts from England, Russia, China, Australia, and other places throughout the world. When propagation conditions are favorable, the pollution generated in any city in the U.S. could be interfering signals anywhere in the world, to say nothing of the interference caused in the immediate vicinity of the BPL site.

The article makes no mention of another reason not to consider BPL a viable broadband access method. Field trials have proven that as little as 1/5th to 1/20th of the power of a typical public service or amateur radio disrupts or completely blocks the BPL signals. The regulations under which BPL operates state that in addition to not causing interference to any licensed service, it must also tolerate any interference, including interference that causes undesired operation, that it receives from licensed users of the spectrum.

There are a number of alternative technologies that are much better at providing low-cost broadband internet access. These include WiFi, cable, DSL, and Fiber channel. These competing technologies are also non-polluting, where BPL has been proven to be a polluter of the radio spectrum in many trials throughout the world and in the US. Most of these trials ended when it became obvious that the interference problems were too expensive to solve or the solution reduced the system capability to the point that it was no longer competitive with the technologies mentioned previously.

There is an excellent introductory page on the ARRL website, http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/, that has extensive information as well as links to trials that have been conducted elsewhere. I urge you to visit the link and learn more about this technology and why it is such a bad idea.

Posted by: n5bia@...   Posted on: 07/12/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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