In article ,
Phil Kane wrote:

If that were to happen, the BPL providers would exercise the same
"money talks and big money talks loudly" leverage as they have done to
get BPL approved, and thereby get the FCC to shut the Amateur Radio
services down in those areas, much as the Air Force (my pre-FCC
employer) is clobbering 3/4 meter band operation with their Pave Paws
radar systems.

Fortunately, the legal situations which exist with regard to those two
situations are rather different.

w/r/t the PAVE PAWS radar systems in the 420 - 450 MHz frequency band,
the government radar system is the primary user of this frequency
spectrum, and has been for years. Amateur operators are secondary
users of these frequencies, and are (and have been) explicitly
required to limit use of these frequencies so that amateur use does
not interfere with the primary users (radar). All that has happened
recently, is that the government users have actually asserted that
amateur use _is_ interfering with radar, and that amateur users must
eliminate the interference as is required by the FCC rules.

In short, the Air Force has the law on their side. We can hope that
the ARRL's work to come up with a selective interference-mitigation
program will succeed... but if the Air Force gets snicky and insists
on a total shutdown of 70 cm ham repeaters near the PAVE PAWS sites,
they can make it stick.

The situation with BPL is different, as least as far as the law reads
today... BPL operators have *no* licensed right to radiate in the
amateur bands, while amateur users are either primary or secondary
users of these bands. The ARRL is making a pretty good case that the
FCC is ignoring both the law (national, and perhaps even international
law and treaty obligations), and their own regulations, in allowing
BPL operators to behave as they are.

My personal opinion is that BPL will self-destruct on economic grounds
if we amateurs can just hold out long enough.

Agreed.

The BPL providers have made big noise about how BPL will open up
broadband access to rural customers who are not now served by any
broadband providers. It would be amusing to see what would happen if
the FCC were to offer these providers the right to continue operating
BPL systems with current emission levels... but *only* on the
condition that the providers would agree to fund a build-out of their
system to cover 90% or more of rural customers. Imagine the howls of
"Oh, we can't afford that!"

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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