"Dave Platt" wrote in message
...
In article flFxc.1843$2i5.155@attbi_s52, AK wrote:

Great. If BPL is unworkable, let it fail in the marketplace.

That's one of those nonsense comments that sounds good, but doesn't work.
Once "the marketplace" gets tested, amateur radio and most of the other
users of HF and MF radio reception will be out of business - never to
bounce
back once destroyed. Meanwhile, BPL will be "workable" for those areas
that
never had good cable access and where people were too cheap to use
satellite
or telephone alternatives. BPL isn't "unworkable" - it's the
"unreasonable"
sacrifices that must be made to allow nationwide radio spectrum
disruption
for some trivial gain to a few people and a few big businesses.

There's an interesting analogy to this situation playing out in the
airwaves right now. My understanding of this situation is as follows
(and may be a bit incorrect).

Some years ago, the FCC decided to allow a company which I believe was
called Fleet Telecommunications to set up some digital-packet-oriented
communication on a set of frequencies in the 800 MHz range. These
frequencies were located quite close to the 800 MHz narrow-band FM
channels allocated to publics-safety ground (trunked police and fire
systems, etc.).

There was concern expressed at the time that these digital channels
might cause interference with the existing analog channels
(intermodulation and receiver desensing, I think). The FCC agreed to
allow the allocations, on the condition that the digital operator
ensure that interference to existing allocations would not occur or
would be abated.

Subsequently (I'm hazy on the details) Fleet either went out of
business or was bought up... in either case, Nextel ended up as the
owner of these 800 MHz digital allocations. Nextel has used them as
the basis of much of its current-generation cellphone system.

The result: significant, and sometimes very severe, interference to
public-safety radio operations. There have been numerous reports of
police and firefighters being unable to use their radios successfully,
when in proximity to Nextel cellular sites. This has resulted in very
real danger to life-and-limb for police officers and firefighters.

Nextel has taken some steps to abate specific instances of this
(reducing power) when it's called to their attention, but the problem
remains.

There's a whole massive brouhaha taking place now, about "rebanding"
the 800 MHz spectrum. This will probably involve consolidating the
public-safety frequencies (requiring modification or replacement of
much equipment - Nextel has offered to pay $billions to do this but
there's concern that it'll cost twice that much), and moving at least
some of Nextel's cellular allocations upwards to a higher frequency
band. Nextel wants a big block of spectrum space in compensation,
while other companies claim that the FCC has no legal authority to
simply hand over that space to Nextel and that the law requires the
spectrum to be auctioned to the highest bidder. No matter what the
FCC decides to do, it's likely to end up being challenged in Federal
court and delayed for years.

It's a horrible mess. Some claim that the FCC *could* have acted, on
its own authority, to order Nextel to shut down operations in the
interleaved bands, because their system is apparently violating the
"we will not cause interference to other licensed operations" clauses
which were part of the original Fleet allocation grant. The FCC has
apparently asserted that it doesn't have authority to act on its own
in the absence of a formal legal complaint from a public-safety radio
organization... and no city or county or state has been willing to
file such a complaint (perhaps because the cost of pursuing it
against a deep-pockets company like Nextel would be very high indeed).

I agree that if BPL is rolled out en mass, it _is_ likely to cause
serious interference with HF operations (amateur and otherwise), and
that the momentum of "Hey, we've invested billions to field BPL, you
can't just shut us down" is likely to override the original "No, there
won't be interference" promised.

That's real interesting about Nextel. My experience with the 800 MHz bands
(LTR trunking systems) ended before digital cell phones existed, but I can
certainly believe that frequency spreading must cause some com channel
interference if you are near the transmitter site. Well, anyone who really
believes that the FCC will mitigate interference to amateur radio that is
caused by big-lobbying power companies should also believe in "temporary
taxes" and Santa Clause.

AK