Chris Imlay, W3KD, General Counsel for the American Radio Relay League ("ARRL") and an attorney for a number of broadcast stations, was the featured speaker at the Quarter Century Wireless Association's Chapter 91 Holiday Luncheon on December 11, 2004.  Chris first talked about Broadband over Power Line ("BPL") which he called "Public Enemy #1 - an idea that should never have gotten started in the first place."

     Following is a summary of his BPL remarks as written by the chapter's secretary and posted on the club's web site.  While Chris' comments are directed at amateur radio operators, the points are equally valuable to the broadcast community.  Thanks to John Reiser (FCC retired and QCWA Chapter 91 president) for calling this gem to CGC's attention.
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     Summary of remarks by Chris Imlay at QCWA's Chapter 91 Holiday Luncheon on December 11, 2004:

     BPL: "The FCC Technical Staff consists of good engineers; they know what's an interference source and what's not.  They didn't invent the idea of BPL or propose it on their own, the second Bush administration did. The Bush administration holds as a policy objective the provision of broadband access for everyone by 2007."

     "Someone far from the FCC put into the Bush administration's mind the idea that BPL is a good idea because power lines go everywhere.  And it seems like a great idea until you realize that unshielded power lines are marvelous unintentional radiators of radio frequency energy."

     "FCC head Michael Powell believes that the key to economic success in this country is broadband access for everybody, and the key to affordable access is competition from a variety of broadband service providers.  If it worked for cellular telephony, it should work for broadband access as well, or so the chairman believes."

     "So the die was cast because the FCC was told by the Bush administration to make this happen.  As we were told by someone within the FCC, "The chairman out-drove his headlights on this one."

     After several studies were done to determine BPL's interference potential, "We went to Capitol Hill to say that you're squandering a natural resource when there's no reason to do so." What the ARRL tried to get across to the legislators was the difference between the goal of "broadband access for everyone," which is a good idea, and the idea of BPL, which is a very bad one.

     The FCC's Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) on BPL came out, followed later by the FCC's Report and Order on November 12, 2004.  The latter "was a disappointment."  While the FCC recognized that BPL would produce pulse noise that is very hard to suppress, it pointed to the fact that the HomePlug folks had "notched out" all but one of the amateur bands and that seemed to be a solution that hopefully could be applied elsewhere.

     Unfortunately, the Report and Order contains "a number of questionable conclusions and findings.  The petitions for reconsideration are not yet due, but the ARRL plans to file one...."

     "The Report and Order contains no technical arguments at all.  It simply recites what the BPL proponents think, what its opponents think, and what the FCC thinks, without any justification whatsoever...  Where we think we have the FCC is on the field tests."  Despite the FCC's claim that their conclusions about BPL are based on extensive field testing, the Report and Order contains none of the results from those purported tests.

     "The Report and Order also has a warning about frivolous complaints.  Our view of that is it was designed to discourage amateur radio operators from filing complaints against BPL operators.  We plan to argue that point strongly on appeal."

     "Our view is that the problem may resolve itself because other competing technologies look so much more attractive.  BPL has deployment problems that make it not cost-effective, even in rural areas."

     "The Supreme Court is in the process of determining whether Voice-over-Internet protocols and cable modems are information services, like the Internet, and therefore not subject to regulation, or whether they are telecommunication services, like wire-line telephone services, and thus subject to regulation.  The outcome of that case may have a profound effect on BPL deployment."

      Chris noted that "Pepco has decided to not deploy BPL.  The longer the delays in BPL deployments, the more likely that BPL will be overtaken by other, more promising, technologies."

[Pepco is an investor-owned utility that provides electricity in Washington, DC and the Maryland suburbs, serving more than 700,000 customers.   - Ed.]
 

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