Hams Complain about Powerline Broadband

dwm writes "Think broadband over power lines (BPL) would be wonderful? There might be some collateral damage. The American Radio Relay League (your friendly neighborhood ham radio operators) have documented dramatic HF radio interference in areas where BPL is being tested (Check out the video of actual interference)."

Comments

Ham radio users

[trippinonbsd]

How many people still rely on ham radio? Why havent they moved over to something a little more modern? Does ham radio have any advantages over current technology?

Re:Ham radio users

[Directrix1]

It can go around the world without the need of a network. That is all.

Re:Ham radio users

[ForestGrump]

Being a ham myself...
Ever go camping and think..
"I'll bring my cell phone and if an emergency happens, I can call for help."

Well welcome to the world of "modern technology". Cell phones are great. I admit it. My mother can find me pratically any place, anywhere. Car breaks down in the middle of the highway, I can call AAA for a tow truck. Etc.

However, cell phones magically don't work when there is no network.

So if you went camping in the mountains, or your on a remote strip of road and there is no cell network, GOOD LUCK!
A ham radio, not being network dependent, you can put out a call for help (and hope that someone is listening on the other end.) Atleast with a HAM, your chances of finding help infinately higher.

Now what else can ham radios do?
-Ham radios have great range. using something like 0.5 watts of power, I can talk to a friend a mile away. (go to same high school) Using 5 watts of power (typical for a hand heald), I can talk to someone else 10-15 miles away without trouble.

Also, I can drive around in a car, talk to someone when I'm driving to and from work without running a fatty cell phone bill.

So yes. I, being a HAM op, have moved to something more modern (cell phone), however, I still prefer to use the ham in the car (saves cell phone mins).

HOpe this post helps.
-Grump.

Re:Ham radio users

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

"Does ham radio have any advantages over current technology?"

Yes. It is a distributed network of independent nodes, most of which have generators and battery backups, whose primary reason for existing is for emergency communications. In case of massive disruption of power and other transmissions ... they can keep broadcasting. It's low-tech, cheap, and easy. Can even be mobile. And in the intervals between emergencies, you can chat.

After the big Mexico City earthquake, all the microwave towers had to be realigned, the phones were out until lines and power to switching equipment could be restored, and none of the TV stations could reach their satellites - one TV building collapsed. For the critical first few hours, the hams in Mexico City (civilian, military and diplomatic nodes) were the sole source of contact between the city and the rest of the world ... much of it through New Zealand hams who then relayed the information to North America because of an odd bounce in the transmissions.

After things settled down a bit, I spent hours at a local tech college's ham setup with other bilingual persons, recieving and transcribing "we're OK" messages, while other students relayed the messages to the closest ham station they could reach that might be able to get the message through. On the Mexican end, mobile ham units were relaying messages, neighborhood by neighborhood. (most of those neighborhoods don't have running water, let alone cable for boradband).

Re:Ham radio users

[the_argent]

I realize you are trolling....
But I'll bite. Recently here in NE Ohio, we were hit by some pretty bad storms that caused some pretty destructive flash flooding. Hams reporting weather conditions and flood reports over the SKYWARN system were able to get realtime info to both the national weather service and to the local Red Cross branch so that they could get shelters set up in trouble areas before they were needed. In particular, an apartment complex had two of their buildings cut off when the little 12" stream that ran in front of their building rose to 12 feet. This also knocked out power to that area, so we had roughly 100+ people isolated (the only way out was a good 40 min hike though some rough terrain even if it hadn't been pouring down rain for 8 hours already) on the other side of a now major river. Two ham's (sorry guys, forget your calls) hopped in a 4WD vehicle and went there and did an onsite assesment even before the already overtaxed police showed up on site. That is what ham radio is really set up for. The band allocation that we get to play with is meant for emergency communications. Sure, we use it for rag chews mostly, but when the crap hits the fan, I'm glad I have a 2M HT that can get me communications when I need it. The major trouble with the BPL thing is that it already creates interference on the bands, and they lobbiests want to increase the wattage they push, which will worsen the situation exponentially.
And besides, what good will a cell phone do if your towers go down like they did when the WTC fell? Ham radio had comms flowing in and out of ground zero in under 3 hours then.
Ham radio still fills a very vital role in todays world when a disaster strikes.

73 KC8SNS

Re:Ham radio users

[Alien Being]

"Am I wrong?"

The importance of ham radio becomes apparent during wartime and other emergency situations. Battery, antenna, and radio and you're "online". There are too many things (and people) that can happen to the average person's IP connectivity.

Re:Ham radio users

[suwain_2]

That's really naive. Why do we still rely on cars? They're over 100 years old; haven't we moved to something more modern?

To suggest that ham radio hasn't evolved is completely ignorant. Modern ham radios sport LCDs, top-quality DSP filters to pull out signals you might not otherwise here, advanced speech compression, etc. Modern repeaters are Internet-linked; a local repeater might be linked with one in a foreign country over the Internet. It's hardly the radio Marconi knew.

Futhermore, hams are constantly coming up with new ideas. 'Back in the day,' it was a ham who invented cordless phones. (Which eventually evolved into cell phones.) Hams are constantly innovating; while some hams love nothing more than Morse code on an 'antique' radio, quite a few are also pioneering new technologies -- PSK31, for example, a remarkable digital technology usable on the HF (worldwide) bands, that uses very little bandwidth and is able to work well even with heavy interference.

Yet another factor you overlook is the role hams play in emergency communications. A TON of hams are actively involved in emergency communications. I'm hundreds of miles from New York City; on September 12th, 2001, several local hams flew out to NYC to help with emergency communications. In a testament to how many hams help, they were turned away due to the fact that they already had too many volunteers providing emergency communications.

I have a cell phone and a high-speed Internet connection. But what happens when there's an Earthquake, and the local phone lines (which the cell towers are connected to) and Internet lines are taken down? Hams have a history -- that lives on -- of providing emergency communications.

Re:Ham radio users

[stick-boy]

According to this website, there are "736577 active Amateur licenses" as of August 8, 2003.

Why don't they move over to something more modern? Do they have to? Maybe because of the challenge of making a contact over hundreds of miles using very low watt transcievers, or experimenting with Earth-Moon-Earth communications, or slow-scan TV. Just because they can pick up a phone and call someone the same distance away isn't the point. I can easily install windoze on a computer and make it work, but that doesn't mean I have to. I prefer a challenge, which is why I started playing with Linux and use it on most of my computers. How many of you installed Linux the first time, just for the challenge? Maybe it wasn't the easiest system to use, and people might say, "why don't you just use windoze?" I'm just trying to make the slashdot audience understand where hams are coming from, although the analogy may be bad.

I'm torn about the BPL issue, though. I applied for and got my first ham license 2 months ago, and I got my first "rig" a couple weeks ago. I'm excited to start a new hobby, and I'm studying to upgrade to a General class license. On the other hand, BPL would allow my parents to have broadband. They live 3 miles from a small town, and currently use Wi-Fi which sometimes works. I'd like to see more people get broadband, but does it have to be at the cost of losing a hobby that's been around for 100 years?

~jason
KC0QHQ

Re:Ham radio users

[Goody]

It's more of a hobby than a necessity

Is broadband pr0n a necessity ? Don't answer that :-)

Ham radio may just be a hobby, but it is an important one. We provide emergency communications when celular, telco, and power are dead. It promotes international goodwill. It allows many people to learn RF engineering and become great engineers. For the nerds, you can play with high power RF, pass data, send video, bounce signals off the moon, use sattelites, and much more....

Re:Ham radio users

[NanoGator]

"The importance of ham radio becomes apparent during wartime and other emergency situations. Battery, antenna, and radio and you're "online". There are too many things (and people) that can happen to the average person's IP connectivity. "

It's true. When the war started, that's how John Connor was able to make contact with the resistance fighters.

Re:Ham radio users

[Eosha]

"It's more of a hobby than a necessity"

As a strike team leader for a mountain search and rescue team, I'll tell you that without HAM radio, our job would be just plain impossible in many situations. There simply is no other option currently in existence. HAM radio is not only a hobby, but in my line of work it's a critical life-support resource, more so than any other technology we use (except maybe a flashlight). Tell the thousands of people whose lives have been saved through S&R or any of the other emergency situations that depend on HAM capabilities that it's not really a necessity.

KD5SMV

Re:Ham radio users

[Gonarat]

Wait until there is a natural (or man made) disaster in your area and comunications are knocked out. No phone, internet, or power. Ham radio can be the only way to communicate out of an area. Modern communications are great, but there are times when good old ham radio is needed, and is the only way to communicate. So, yes, it is just a hobby -- at least until that tornado, earthquake, hurricane, etc. comes...

DE WB3IZT

Re:Ham radio users

[Alien Being]

"The answer is to discover which frequencies this interferes with and move the hams off of those frequencies. "

In other words, take some more ground from the commons and give it to big business. No thanks.

And even if I did agree with you on that point, this case would still be different. It's a wired service. The RF bandwidth is being wasted because it's just a lousy way to send data. If they set their minds to it, they could probably come up with an economical way to string some fiber over the towers they already own. Power lines have some serious but unavoidable drawbacks as it is. Why add more problems?

Re:Ham radio users

[demonbug]

HAM radio is not only a hobby, but in my line of work it's a critical life-support resource, more so than any other technology we use (except maybe a flashlight). Tell the thousands of people whose lives have been saved through S&R or any of the other emergency situations that depend on HAM capabilities that it's not really a necessity.

I have to second this. On a class camping trip a few years back we were at a hike-in campground along the coast in a remote part of California (yes, there are still some remote parts of California). One morning while boiling water for some coffee one of the guys on the trip accidentally overturned the pot, drenching himself with boiling water. Needles to say, he received some extremely bad burns from this. We were out of cell range, no phones within 15-20 miles, and no vehicles with us. The scope of the burns was way beyond anything we could treat with the first aid equipment we had on hand. Fortunately, one of the people on the trip was an amateur HAM radio operator and had brought his portable equipment along. Unable to contact anyone nearby, he was able to contact an operator in Hawaii, who then called the police and rescue people in our vicinity, who were then able to send a truck to pick him up in just over an hour. The HAM radio probably saved this guy's life - though yes, if we had had a satellite phone along it might have done the trick (but then it might not have - after using GPS, which tends to be extremely fickle in wooded areas, I'm not at all certain that it would have worked anyway). HAM provides a long-range method of communications that we really don't have a higher-tech replacement for at this point.

Harmful interference

[frumin]

I'm a HAM radio oprator. It bothers me that some pople don't see anyting wrong with creating interference on already allocated radio waves. What if the same companies started to interfere with WiFi bands ? How would you react ?

Re:Harmful interference

[CharlieG]

Actually, Ham radio operators, being licensed do NOT have to accept interference! That is the diference between a "Part 15" device and a Part 97 device.

Your 802.11 device has to accept interference, part 97 (Ham radio) or any other licensed service does not

Re:Harmful interference

[ChuckleBug]

I'm not a radio geek, or lawyer, but, doesn't every device that has an FCC label on it basically say that you have to accept any interference that occurs? Therefore, if it bothered the 802.11 spectrum, we'd be irritated about it, and probably contact someone to get it changed. But, until things changed, we'd have to deal with it, either by filtering the noise, changing frequencies, etc.

You can't filter this stuff. It's absolutely rock-crushing interference. The problem is that the overhead electrical wiring is a really efficient antenna.

The other thing is, that Amateur Radio is a licensed service, which give it certain privileges, one of those being that you aren't allowed to interfere with it. You're thinking of unlicensed devices, like wireless phones, that aren't protected this way.

Yet another thing: BPL radiates over a HUGE bandwidth. The BPL companies want to use 2 to 80 MHz. That would wipe out the entire HF band, which hams and others use to communicate long distance. It also includes 6 meter VHF (50-54 MHz). In contrast the entire HF allocation to hams is 3.36 Mhz total. Include 6m, and it's 7.36. BPL is an enormous bandwidth hog.

This implementation of BPL would be disastrous for ham radio and anyone else using HF frequencies, like shortwave broadcasters, coast guard, government, marine, and so on.

The idea that they could obliterate 78 MHz of spectrum should be of concern to everyone, not just hams.

Either way, the ball is in the court of the HAM operators. Get together and start writing letters, making phone calls, etc.

We are. BTW, ham is not an acronym.

Re:Harmful interference

[DerekLyons]

I'm a HAM radio oprator. It bothers me that some pople don't see anyting wrong with creating interference on already allocated radio waves. What if the same companies started to interfere with WiFi bands ? How would you react ?

Many folks on /. cheerfully support music & video piracy, copyright infringement, and outright theft of other peoples IP.

Why should they feel different about the window of the electromagnetic spectrum you are legally entitled to use?

Re:Harmful interference

[peeping_Thomist]

and outright theft of other peoples IP.

There's no such thing as intellectual property. There's copyright law, trademark law, and patent law, but "IP" is an empty concept.

Re:Harmful interference

[fwc]

If the Amateur radio operators are out of compliance, believe me, the FCC will notify them and shut them down if they don't fix the problem.

That said, RFI problems like you described are usually NOT the fault of Amateur Radio operators. More specifically:

1. Many times the source of interference is someone operating illegally. Illegal CB operation (I.E. big huge amplifiers - which are against FCC rules, etc. etc.) is probably the biggest cause. Believe me, most Ham radio operators would love to take these people out back and teach them about respect for the rules.

2. Even if the source of the interference is an Amateur radio operator, many times the problem is tracked down to a low-quality piece of consumer equipment at the person being interfered with's end. As long as the Ham radio operator is operating within the rules, the owner of the equipment is responsible to fix the issue - as it is their equipment with the technical problem.

3. If it is in fact the amateur radio operator's problem, it is their duty to fix it. The FCC can and does pull licenses for this type of stuff.

If you are having problems along this line, contact your local Ham Radio Club a call. In most cases, they have a vested interest in finding the source of the problem and helping fix it. You can see clubs in your area by going to The club search page on the ARRL site.

Remember that Ham radio operators provide a valuable service when the crap hits the fan. Most Amateur radio operators are actually skilled in what they do and take great pains to insure they don't cause unwanted interference, as interference only hurts the Ham radio community.

Re:Harmful interference

[RocketScientist]

Keep that in mind next time you're flying in from europe on approach to Kennedy airport.

All the communications that planes use all the way across the ocean is shortwave. Aeronautical mobile service. But this is only a few thousand people a day, no big deal, let 'em miss the airport?

Maybe next time your fishing boat is out in the atlantic and you need to call the coast guard. Maritime mobile service. Wow, this might only be a dozen people a year, let 'em drown.

Your "proportion to number of users effected" argument doesn't look so good now does it?

Every time there's an earthquake or a hurricane in the western hemisphere, I get a little email from the FCC via the ARRL telling me I can't use a specific set of frequencies because they're being used for emergency health and welfare traffic. Usually this is the non-urgent stuff, like "yeah, mom, me and the kids got through the earthquake OK". But that's only a few thousand folks a year. Let mom worry.

These are things that happen. Real people who use those frequencies in ways that make their lives better. And you are advocating interfering with all of that so you can get Internet access into your house faster and cheaper. Your "nature of use" argument begins to wear here. Seriously, given the choice between more effective air-sea rescue and cheaper porn, you're choosing the porn. Unfortunately, I think the FCC's on your side. I don't think Congress is though, they've already overruled that dickmaster once.

Admittedly, this is low power interference, but on those frequencies, it doesn't take much to send signals globally. Seriously, you can send signals with fractions of a watt in the right conditions and get good readable copy on the other side of the world. This interference level would pretty much devastate those frequencies worldwide.

Re:Right ON!

[John Miles]

I'm a ham, and I don't think this is a troll. It brings up a very valid point about the relative merits of two different communications paradigms.

HF ("short wave") communications certainly lacks the strategic and commercial importance it once had. It's always been a relatively-noisy, unreliable, and bandwidth-constrained way to communicate, and nowadays, HF is used primarily as a backup for satellite and long-haul microwave circuits. We could live without if we had to.

If, by sacrificing the entire HF radio spectrum, we could actually wire every home in the USA for economical broadband Internet access, I honestly wouldn't oppose it. Amateur Radio operators and commercial/military/governmental HF operators alike should realize the truth: we can't shy away from the technological, economic, and social potential of universal broadband Internet connectivity because of the lamentations of a few modern-day buggy-whip manufacturers.

Now, as a disclaimer, I will say that I don't believe that power-line distribution makes sense for broadband Internet. The power companies have spent the last hundred years optimizing their network to ship 60-Hz sine waves around, and trying to shovel data through a network like that is bound to be more trouble than, say, running fiber to every curb in America.

Re:give the guy an insightful

[CharlieG]

The same place they found them after 9/11 where ham radio was the only reliable mode of comms around ground zero for a couple of days. You know who told the disaster workers WHO to contact to start getting phones setup? The Hams on site, who had contacts with the right folks

You live in, let's sa the LA area (you mention earthquakes). No a search on LA and CERT. The hams TRAIN to work with the police and fire departments in case of disaster

Look up ARES - The Amateur Radio Emergency Service

Look up the fact that ARES works closely with the Red Cross, the Dept of Homeland Security, FEMA, LOTS of fire departments, wilderness rescue teams and the like

Look up RACES - Look up what happens if the Government declares a Radio Communications Emergency (and think about what happens to your 802.11 links - say "Bye-bye")

Re:Ham radio users - ampr.org

[Cerlyn]

Packet radio is extremely routable. TCP/IP is one way we do it, but actually is not the most common method.

As another poster pointed out, amateur radio operators mainly use AX.25. Both TCP/IP and AX.25 are X.25 derivatines. AX.25 identifiers are Amateur Radio callsigns with numeric suffixes (such as "N0CALL-10"). AX.25 routing is done by broadcasting while gradually incrementing your TTL until someone hears them for you (if they aren't your immediate neighbor), or manually entered information (either as a route table or "Connect to SOME1 via SOME2, SOME3, SOME4").

There are also a few other ways (such as NETROM and ROSE) amateur radio operators can route information digitally. While it would be a stretch, NETROM could be considered our equivalent of BGP router advertising and periodic route annoucements. ROSE is a polled system similar to Token Ring.

We also have our share of propritary speedup techniques (such as KA-NODE from Kantronics) and experiemental protocols as well.

BPL is a Technological Train Wreck

[Goody]

Passing data over power lines is irresponsible from an engineering perspective. Power lines were designed to carry very very low frequencies, 60 hertz to be exact. BPL is wideband noise from 1 to 80 megahertz.

Anyone with the slightest electical engineering knowledge knows that a signal of such high frequencies will be radiated and antenuated nearly immediately. The power lines are just awful transmission media for these frequencies. What is needed for the power cables is shielding -- that's what's known as coaxial cable. ( Why don't they pass data on cable ? :-)

This is analogous to the water company trying to deliver water with perforated pipes. The water just spills out everywhere and every couple hundred feet they would have to pump in more water so that you had sufficient water pressure at your house.

BPL was rejected in Japan and Europe, becuase it polluted the spectrum so bad it was pathetic.

For those dumping on ham radio as being obsolete or feel broadband is more important, consider that this will interfere with many other services including international ship distress frequencies, government (including military) allocations, shortwave broadcasts, and most likely aviation and public safety frequencies. Is your ability to get high speed pr0n more important than all this ?

Why is everyone else (like the FCC and utility companies) saying this is great ? The FCC is pro-big business and pro-utility. Equipment vendors are retreading the same technology that was rejected overseas and not informing their clients, the power companies, of the true interference potential. The power companies are dying to get into the broadband race as the telcos have their heads up their butts with DSL.

We need broadband, but this is not the solution. We need to remove the barriers for DSL and cable. Power companies could leapfrog the telcos and cable companies with fiber into the home or unlicensed wireless from their poles.

Quite simply, BPL is DOA.

Disappointed

[NatZi]

I have been reading /. for years and this is the most disappointing reaction to a story posting that I have seen to date.

First, BPL is proven to cause interference to more than just amateur radio. Amateur radio operators are one of the few groups that has the skills and capabilities to prove the problem exists before a major mistake is made in deploying BPL.

Second, I have seen a number of anecdotes indicating that "ham" radio operators are jerks and, therefore, apparently should not have any rights. Obviously, in any group, a small minority of the members may be jerks. However, "hams" are by far one of the kindest, most intelligent, and thoughtful groups that I know. It is not fair for me to minimize the "jerk" problem, but I cannot see a link between being a jerk and having rights taken away. Get to know some real amateur radio operators and you will see a dedicated, service-oriented, and technologically cutting edge group.

Third, amateur radio operators are licensed by the FCC. The licensing requires extensive testing and is conducted very professionally (locate a local VEC session and you will see what I mean about professionalism). The tests are rigorous, especially for the higher classes, and require the applicant to be seriously interested in radio and technical communications.
Amateur radio operators are not a bunch of people with "CBs" sitting around making life difficult for others.

Forth, amateur radio operators are largely responsible for many of the "Internet crowd" technologies. Wireless Internet (I was doing that in 1990), satellite tv, "cell" phones, etc. were all largely based on amateur radio technologies. Amateur radio is really a cutting edge scientific and technical discipline.

Fifth, and probably most important, BPL may sound like an excellent idea; but the telecom industry promised broadband access via standard telephone and digital line technologies to most people in the US by 2006 as part of the mega merger process in the 1980s and 1990s. In exchange for creating mega-monopolies, the telcos promised to provide broadband services. The telcos, however, have heavily lobbied Congress and state governments to conveniently "forget" this little deal because it is now "too expensive." If the telcos would be held to their agreements, poor technologies like BPL would not be needed. Think about it: do you really want your Internet connections from a high voltage/amperage power line? Contact your Congressperson and state representatives and ask why the telcos have not lived up to the commitments.

I guess I am just disappointed that a number of /.ers are attacking amateur radio rather than seeking more information about the service. "Hams" are not just ten old guys sitting around using "CBs" to talk in some antiquated manner or a bunch of old guys hunched over a telegraph key slowly tapping out morse code. Amateur radio is also not just an "emergency" service -- although some amateur radio operators do participate in emergency communications. You would be amazed at what amateur radio has to offer -- GPS location services, radio/Internet interconnects, satellite communications, digital communications, microwave projects, rural Internet, and other bleeding edge projects. Many of these projects will become standard /.er fair in five or ten years.

Sorry to get on my soap box.

Not just hams would be effected

[RocketScientist]

Check this out..

There's a link there for the PDF of the spectrum allocation. Pretty much "DC to Daylight". The piece that BPL is going to destroy covers a lot of Ham allocations. But it also covers things like:
Maritime Mobile
Aeronautical Mobile
Space Research
Standard Time Signals
Shortwave Broadcast
Radio Astronomy
Land Mobile
Fixed-station

The amateur service is a very small part of the spectrum below 30 Mhz. A lot of it is used for things like trans-oceanic flights, military and civilian mobile services, and the like.

I'm of two minds whether this will pass or not. Michael Powell, the FCC chair, hasn't made a good decision since he got into office, so I'm thinking this will go through because he's got the power companies all giving him blow jobs under the table. On the other hand, the FAA, NTIA, the military, and the shortwave broadcasters may get through to the FCC that they can't allow this, and maybe somebody will get that lamebrain Powell to do something right.