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Posted on 06/12/2004 8:09:47 PM PDT by Denver Ditdat
ARRL Takes Issue with Public Funding of New York BPL Project
The ARRL Letter Vol. 23, No. 24 June 11, 2004
The ARRL has questioned the propriety of a New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) grant from public funds to promote a broadband over power line (BPL) project. The project is believed to be the BPL field test now under way in Briarcliff Manor. The Westchester County community is just north of New York City. ARRL CEO David Sumner, K1ZZ, on June 10 faxed a strongly worded letter to NYSERDA President Peter R. Smith asserting that acknowledged interference from the Briarcliff Manor installation clearly violates the Communications Act of 1934.
"We respectfully suggest that this violation of federal law is relevant to the question of whether such a grant of funding is in the public interest," Sumner told Smith. He said both fixed and mobile stations operated by the nation's 680,000 Amateur Radio licensees in the US "are entitled to absolute protection from harmful interference from unlicensed emitters such as PLC/BPL systems."
Utility Consolidated Edison and Ambient Corporation on June 8 announced the award of NYSERDA funding, pending final contract negotiations, "to enhance their PLC pilot in Westchester County." The announcement from Ambient says the Con Edison-Ambient proposal "was favorably reviewed by a technical evaluation panel and NYSERDA management." The authority will provide up to $200,000 of the $480,000 project.
Smith said NYSERDA was "excited about the potential PLC technology has to improve system reliability and power quality for business and residential customers in New York." Ambient says the project will enable Con Edison to monitor two overhead distribution circuits via Ambient's utility applications as well as provide a backbone to deliver high-speed Internet service. "To gain the support of a government agency such as NYSERDA, is a further testament to the potential of Ambient's technology," the news release said.
Sumner told Smith that the Briarcliff Manor field trial for months has been "the source of ongoing harmful interference to radio communication in violation of §15.5(b) of the Federal Communications Commission rules." He pointed to documentation of interference, filed complaints and failures to immediately eliminate the interference posted on the BPL in Briarcliff Manor Web site of ARRL member Alan Crosswell, N2YGK, a resident of the community.
Sumner also attached an April 26 reply to the FCC from Holland & Knight LLP, a law firm representing Ambient, in response to Crosswell's March 31 interference complaint. The letter, to Jim Burtle, chief of the Experimental License Branch within the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology, indicates that Ambient representatives spoke with Crosswell "to confirm that the company takes his interference concerns seriously" and was evaluating various options, including notching. The Briarcliff Manor pilot project was granted an FCC Experimental License, WD2XEQ, last September.
In his letter to Smith, Sumner said the BPL system operator failed to terminate the test immediately following Crosswell's complaint and allowed the interference to continue, "despite the clearly stated requirement of §15.5(b) that operation is subject to the condition that no harmful interference is caused."
George Y. Wheeler of Holland and Knight said Ambient was studying the proposed FCC BPL guidelines and was "considering how to introduce them into its test program at an early date." In the meantime, Ambient notched out the 20-meter amateur band. "Initial results from field tests have shown feasibility of notching as a mitigation technique," Wheeler said, adding that full implementation would require hardware upgrades.
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I honestly cannot see a technology today that can cause that much "noise". Something in these anti-broadband over power reports smells!
Methinks they dost protest too much!
There is technology that can put your telephone over power lines also - it's been around for a couple of decades! If the technology causes that much trouble, it will "wither on the vine" just like the telephone over power did.
That's what I've noticed. I'm interested in some sort of highspeed internet alternative. If they can get past that radio frequency interference problem, this technology will become popular. Most of the sound files I've heard are first generation tests. Companies have already moved into second generation equipment, which possibly won't have the dire effects the ARRL has been worried about. I could be wrong, but most technologies always start out with a snag or two in the beginning.
My son got an offer to beta test for Idaho Power. Only problem, he moved from the test area. We haven't heard anything about the ham radio problem in this area.
If this were to take off, the high speed rates, will go down. The letter my son got said the speed will be 3 times as fast a T1 line.
The practical issues, particularly maintaining emergency communications for disasters, are compelling. Essentially it is a national security issue. Our first priority has to be our security, not any supposed "convenience."
Trials have failed in europe due to interference. If BPL is rolled out on a large scale and interference results in substandard police, fire, or ambulance services, a big class action lawsuit be the next development.
From dslreports.com:
David95037 Member 2003-04-16 Loc:Morgan Hill, CA BPL the sad history, the myths and true reality First a little history (those that ignore history get to repeat the mistakes) BPL (AKA PLC/PLT/DPL) is a tired old legacy technology that has struggled with interference issues since it was first rolled out in Manchester, England in 1997 (one year before the introduction of DSL to Europe). Nortel designed the system. The UK authorities tolerated the interference for a time but when the emergency services traced interference to BPL it was shut down. Development moved to Germany, Nortel struggled on and eventually decided that the interference issues could not be resolved. Siemens then took up the lead, after several thousand customers had been connected up, Siemens came to the same conclusion as Nortel and exited the business. The next company to enter the business was Ascom based in Switzerland. Then an Israeli company called Mainnet entered the BPL market using chips from a Spanish company called DS2. Tests were made in Japan and the authorities banned BPL due to the interference problems. Next Finland shut down their BPL system due to interference problems. By 2003 there were 7,000 users in Europe with a multitude of test sites all small scale. BPL customer growth was stagnant. The U.S. was never considered a market for BPL because of the architecture of the electrical distribution system. In most of Northern Europe electrical distribution is underground with about 200~300 houses for each transformer. In the U.S. much of the electrical distribution is overhead with up to 6 houses sharing a transformer. In what can only be described as a desperate last ditch attempt to sell product and survive, the BPL industry created a "phantom" product that answered the FCC's need for rural broadband. The myth was propagated that BPL was the answer to rural broadband deployment. The FCC commissioners bought the story, the press talked about Internet at every socket. The reality is that of all the Internet distribution technologies BPL is the least suited to go any distance. Every 2,000 feet an expensive repeater in needed to boost the signals. Now to the myths Clean technology myth Tales of interference had preceded BPLs arrival, the myth that the interference issue had been solved (first generation problem!) was told to anyone who would listen. The lobbyists were very successful, they managed to get an FCC commissioner to state that the interference complaints were "unsubstantiated". How the interference problem had been solved was not made clear. The reality is that the interference is even worse than ever, the modulation technique has been changed so that the interference sounds like noise and for many users it will look like a faulty radio issue. Tracking the source and proving the cause will be difficult. High speed myth To add speed to the solution for rural broadband was "icing on the cake". To create the illusion of speed, trial/demo systems where set up where four or five users enthused about speeds in the megabit range. BPL is a shared system and real world results with typical economic user numbers are about 250K (Broadband? more like Midband). In conclusion The only people who will profit from BPL are the power companies who will roll out niche systems in the few markets where the economics make sense. It will only take a few systems to trash the radio spectrum for a substantial portion of the western hemisphere. There are many better ways to provide Internet access, when the choices are rated, BPL but any test comes bottom of the list however you make the measurement.
Where are the various ham-related web forums? I know of a few sites, but they're so inactive it's embarrassing to the hobby.
The ones I am aware of are at http://www.eham.net/ and http://www.qrz.com/ not to mention the Ham Radio newsgroups on Usenet which can be found at Google Groups. (if you don't have a newsreader handy).
I'm not surprised that the FCC commissioners are in favor of BPL. It's a well know fact that they have little or no engineering experience. They are mostly political hacks with no ability to understand technical problems. The fact that BPL has failed all over the world is of no concern to them.
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