FEMA Opposes Broadband Over Powerlines

Curmudgeon Rick writes "According to eHam.net, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has put a submission to the FCC strongly opposing the use of powerlines for broadband distribution. The report can be found here [PDF link]. IMO, vendors should let powerline broadband die. They keep defibrillating it only because of the dollars they poured in; but it is and always was a dead duck." The submission concludes: "FEMA has concluded that introduction of unwanted interference from the implementation of BPL technology into the high frequency radio spectrum will result in significant detriment to the operation of FEMA [emergency] radio systems such as FNARS."

Comments

Depends...

[Svartalf]

Transmission conditions would be fine- but then you're talking about a transmitter with a lot of power compared to the BPL system. The transmitter might even jam the BPL system if it were working.

What they're worried about is reception. Over long distances, while the signals are detectable, they're really pretty weak comparatively speaking. The stuff that the BPL systems are generating are in the ballpark of the signal levels that might be detectable, so the signals from the BPL will be most likely the ones you detect.

So, you might be in a FEMA office, say like in Denton, Texas, where the power is on- but the emergency is in Corpus Christi or Brownsville. Power's out THERE because of a disaster- but the locally running BPL system's causing merry hob with your reception of the signal from that location.

Re:Emergency = Power outage?

[frovingslosh]

When a disaster hits and power and communication are out, hams are not just trying to talk to other hams in the local area (which they generally do on higher VHF and UHF bands anyway), they are trying to reach points that still have power. So if their signal is is jammed by crap radiating from the power lines, then vital communication can be lost.

Besides, how arogant can you be to think that hams should have their equipment sitting around useless because of lots of broadband over powerlines spectrum polution, not even be able to pratice using it or train new hams, and then expect that there will be no problem when there is a power and communication emergency just because the local broadband interference is now temporarly eliminated?