On Jun 18, 3:56 am, Phil Kane wrote:


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


I share that opinion, Phil, as do most others in the telecomm industry
that I associate with. For all the hoopla generated from POTUS right
on down into the ranks of FCC, the stark fact is that real-live users
(notice I didn't say 'paying customers') of BPL number under 10,000
nationwide, and most of those 'users' are participants in 'trials' and
'feasibility studies'. After a half-decade of promotion, BPL has been
unable to gain economic traction in the form of 'production'
installations in real customer bases.

In five years BPL with be nothing more than a footnote in some telecom
technical journals as a dead-end technological curiosity which never
made a dime. Last time I checked there were less than 8,000 paid and
'demonstration' subscribers, and the number was dwindling.

Meanwhile every second issue of QST contains another confrontational
"It seems to us" K1ZZ jeremiad about BPL, we see ARRL President W5ZN
sending huffy letters to the FCC Chairman, ARRL has challenged the
Commission in Federal court, and now a ham in Congress is pushing for
a Bill to have a Congressional "study" of the matter.. All this over
an issue that is already dying a quiet death-by-apathy on the part of
the commercial telecommunications community.

I've spent two successful careers in professional telecommunications,
and maintain strong personal and professional ties in the industry.
Up until about 5 years ago Amateur Radio enjoyed a very positive
reputation among the "pros", but today we are mostly viewed as
obstructionist old coots without a clue, and it's getting worse.

This is absolutely the wrong time to be making enemies of the agency
which controls our service. Kid yourselves not, our Amateur Radio
service exists only so long as FCC considers us "worth the bother",
and the recent behavior of ARRL seems, in my opinion, deliberately
calculated to raise our "bother quotient". We should expect no
support from the pros when FCC decides they've had enough of us; in
fact we should expect them to cheer from the sidelines as we are sent
off the field of play. Recent news out of Newington portends to me a
hastening of that event.

73, de Hans, K0HB
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