It's generally agreed that Access BPL will be a bad thing in any urban
radio environment. It's also apparent that way too many commenters
are trying to voice their grievances to the FCC in the wrong place.

FCC 04-29, the NPRM or Notice of Proposed Rule Making, was
released on 23 February 2004 with a 45 day period for Comments
and a total 75 day period for Replies to Comments.

Once an NPRM is released, any previous documentation
(comments, threats, entreaties, etc.) on the same subject are
essentially ignored by the FCC for the purposes of making new
rules indicated in the NPRM. While the website location may
remain open for comment on a subject long after the subject is
closed, those remain just bits on a very large hard drive and do
not have to be looked at by the FCC for any sort of rulemaking.

ET Docket 03-104 was an NOI or Notice Of Inquiry request by the
FCC to get suggested standards and testing for Broadband over
Power Lines (now called "Access BPL"). By the FCC's format,
the first two digits indicate the year of release (in that case 2003).
The comment and reply-to-comment period on 03-104 is long over,
yet radio amateurs keep posting on 03-104, even after an NPRM
has been released nearly a month before.

03-104 now has 5,713 documents in its ECFS section as of
Sunday, 14 March 2004. At least 600 of those were submitted
AFTER the initial notice of the NPRM (12 February 2004). Any
further input at 03-104 is not going to do any good. According to
the 12 Feb 04 Notice, the Docket number is 04-37. The NPRM is
04-29. As of Sunday, 14 Mar 04, the ECFS listings indicate the
following number of documents on the two dockets -

04-29: 5 04-37: 21

If anyone REALLY wants to make their voice heard on the BPL
subject, the above are the two places to file (I don't know yet why
the initial notice said "docket 04-37" but my Comment went to
both and were indicated as accepted).

The R&O (Report and Order) that established the latest
Restructuring in U.S. amateur radio was FCC 99-412 and was
effective 30 Dec 99. By the ECFS listings on the NPRM 98-143,
218 sent in Comments AFTER that date. All commentary
on 98-143 was cut off on 15 Jan 99 but many continued on
regardless. The last person to "file" comments on 98-143 was
Peter Alterman, PhD, W2CDO, document accepted 24 Sep 03 (!),
over two and a half years AFTER the R&O. Does anyone think
that 200+ comments filed on an NPRM after an R&O has been
issued will somehow make an R&O go away?

No one HAS to file anything on any subject with the FCC. Hams
can just let the ARRL do all the work for them and go back to
playing with their radios. However, anyone who really and truly
cares to comment as a thinking, independent citizen has an
excellent opportunity to speak DIRECTLY to our government.

There's no real delay with electronic filing. But...there's only about
two weeks left for initial Comments and a month more for Reply to
Comments and back-and-forth on same. Time doesn't stand still
and a minority membership organization can't do all the effective
speaking for you.

The alternative is to do NOTHING. Very safe, no effort required.
But, you don't qualify all the subsequent whines and crying about
the awful interference on HF when you did NOTHING. You did
NOTHING even if you sit around high-fiving all the other do-nothing
hams about your self-perceived wonderfulness and glorious
"service" to something or other.

CB was created 46 years ago and hams of today are still crying
and whining and P&Ming about the FCC "stealing away 'their' band"
even though they may not have been born when CB was.

DO SOMETHING. Tell the government what you think.

LHA / WMD