In article , Mike Coslo
writes:

Carl R. Stevenson wrote:

"N2EY" wrote in message
...

In article , "Carl R. Stevenson"
writes:


The FCC and Congress see the ARS as a valuable national resource.

I hope they remember that BPL. FCC seems to require a reminder now and
again...


And they are being reminded vis a vis BPL.


The "money" I'm talking about is that represented by all the OTHER
commercial radio services administered by the FCC.

Oh ... why didn't you say that?


This is where the FCC's true mission exists,

The FCC has a Congressional mandate to regulate all of the radio
spectrum "in the public interest, convenience, and necessity" - that
includes the ARS.

Included in that "public interest, convenience and necessity" are economic
concerns. Some perceive that broadband access to the 'net is somehow a big

part

of economic recovery, regardless of what other services get trashed. See

Comm.

Abernathy's remarks on the "Road To Enlightenment" and "Wideband Nirvana"

being

BPL. As if!


The problem is the the BPL vendors/organizations apparently "pitched"
BPL to the Commissioners as "the greatest thing since sliced bread,
"the infrastructure already exists" (the wires are there, but they'll have
to spend many millions of ratepayers' money to add all of the couplers,
modems, etc.), and that it would provide a quality, economical competitor
to xDSL and cable modems, all with 'no problems'."

It's understandable that the Commissioners would get rather excited
at the prospect, BUT they haven't had all of the facts, just hype from
the BPL industry and utilities that are seeing $signs ... despite the fact
that it's a demonstrably crappy business model. The other reason the
Commissioners would get excited is that they simply don't have the
technical background to see the problems without significant education
on the matter ... and, sadly, NONE of the Commissioners has a technical
advisor on their staff ... several legal advisors each, but not a technical
advisor amongst them.

NOTE: I am NOT trying to "defend" the FCC's enamourment with BPL,
just explaining how it came to be and what's required to turn it around.

One of the odd things about the commissioners however. They must be
able to suspend disbelief pretty easily.

Household and electrical wiring has been around for a long time. And
there's no rocket science to the technology of riding a signal on a line
voltage circuit. Control signals are sent along these wires regularly
and have been for many years.

Mike, the "X10" system works at only a few hundred Hz of spectrum.

At no time was any part of the US electrical distribution system, home
to generating plant, EVER CHARACTERIZED OR STANDARDIZED
AS R.F. TRANSMISSION LINES OVER A 1 TO 80 MHz FREQUENCY
RANGE!

Apparently the Office of Engineering and Technology at the FCC doesn't
understand that yet...?

I can look out at my neighborhood's electrical distribution system and
see "RF transmission lines" that must vary from several hundred Ohms
to just a few Ohms within the metal conduit of my home.

That is NOT any sort of "RF transmission medium" that anyone can
expect to work at either smooth, easy, or trouble-free radio frequency
transmission. There's discontinuities up the ying-yang there and
wherever there are discontinuities, there is also the danger of even
more radiation (in addition to introducing more attenuation).

So if this was (is) such a good way to send signals, why wasn't the
internet developed this way in the first place?

For the simple reason that it does NOT work very well. :-)

I've got a pair of Phonex through-the-line coupled "modems" that are
supposed to work between two rooms here. It's the second pair over the
counter, the first pair returned because they don't work well. Second
pair is no better.

One good reason why they don't work is that the AC wiring in one room
is on one side of the "double-phase" split from the pole drop and the
outliet
in the other room is on the other side. Neither Phonex or any other of the
Homeplug group explains that.

I measured an attenuation from the AC outlets better than 30 db from
10 to 80 MHz, 36 db being lower limit of this setup. The attenuation is
probably greater than that. No sense in improving the test setup with
that much attenuation...it is already too great.

I believe that I am skeptical enough that even if I didn't have a
technical background, that question would pop up pretty quickly when
considering BPL.

Carl, is there any other way that we can aid this fight?

One of the first things to try is to force an explanation of how all the
vaporware BPL systems work. NONE of them explain it in enough
detail to make any electronic sense right now. They haven't done so
in any of the prominent electronic trade publications yet...other than
more generalized, non-specific-detail claims. Vaporware.

LHA