[Arthalion]

Having just participated in the worldwide Boy Scout Jamboree On The Air this past weekend (as an adult leader), this is an unfortunate bit of news. Ham radio is an old hobby that is still enjoyed by a great number of people, and is quite often the springboard used by many young people who get into the communications professions. BPL has a good shot at killing the hobby in the US.

On the other side, it's also possible that ham's will simply try to boost their signals to talk over the BPL interference. This could seriously screw with the viability of BPL. These people are talking about offering everything from VOIP telephone service to Internet access to video on demand services via power lines...imagine losing access to ALL of that every time your neighbor flips on his shortwave rig. Remember, legally you're interfering with him, not the other way around. That section of the spectrum is legally set aside for ham use only...BPL is just so noisy that it interferes with hams legally reserved bandwidth.

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BPL is just so noisy that it interferes with hams legally reserved bandwidth

I would think the technology could overcome this problem. Acoording to the article, the company doing the BPL at present, has overcome this issue of interference with the ham radio frequencies.