 Previous: Huntsville to Host Global EmComm Conference in August |  Next: Oklahoma ARES Members Assist with Floods |
Earlier this week, the FCC filed its reply brief with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The FCC attempted to rebut the ARRL's challenge to the FCC's Broadband over Power Line (BPL) rules enacted in late 2004 and affirmed by the agency in 2006. According to ARRL General Counsel Chris Imlay, W3KD, "The FCC's brief does not accurately describe ARRL's arguments concerning harmful interference."
Given what is in essence a 100 percent probability of interference from BPL systems to fixed and mobile HF facilities at significant distances from power lines, Imlay said Section 301 of the Communications Act does not allow unlicensed BPL systems to operate in the HF bands. "Basically, Section 301 says you can not operate a radio frequency emitting device without a license. The legislative purpose of Section 301 is clearly to avoid interference. FCC's Part 15 rules have assumed that certain very low power devices and systems can operate without predictable interference, thus allowing them to operate without a license, notwithstanding Section 301. But with BPL, the FCC has ignored conclusive record evidence which shows that there will be, and in fact our experience conclusively demonstrates, that BPL causes severe interference to licensed services," Imlay said.
The FCC claims that it has the authority to permit unlicensed BPL under Section 302 of the Act; this section allows the FCC to regulate the interference potential of RF devices. What Section 302 does not do, Imlay said, is to create a loophole in, or modify, or invalidate Section 301.
"It is the ARRL's position," Imlay said, "that the FCC can regulate and authorize BPL with certain safeguards, consistent with the terms of Section 301. However, the FCC simply cannot honestly maintain the position that BPL has an inherently low interference potential. It has a high interference potential, and the rules they have enacted to date are woefully inadequate and insufficient to address it". The ARRL has long maintained that BPL, when not adequately "notched," causes harmful interference to Amateur Radio operations. In its brief, the FCC claims BPL does not cause significant interference and the Courts must defer to the FCC's expertise to decide this issue.
ARRL Chief Executive Officer David Sumner, K1ZZ, said, "The FCC misrepresents the ARRL's position as being that the FCC has no authority to allow unlicensed devices that pose any risk whatsoever of causing interference to licensed services. That's not our position at all. Our position is that the FCC possessed clear evidence, at the time it made its BPL decisions, that the limits it was adopting would allow the deployment of BPL systems with a near-100 percent probability of causing harmful interference to radio receivers hundreds of feet from the power lines. Yet, despite this evidence it characterized the likelihood of harmful interference as 'low.'"
The brief goes on to say that, in the FCC's view, mobile stations and fixed stations are protected against harmful interference from BPL. But with respect to mobile stations complaining of interference, the FCC requires only that BPL operators reduce the radiated emission levels to 20 dB below the Part 15 maximum levels for radiated emissions. This, in the HF bands, still permits BPL noise at levels that preclude communications entirely. It offers mobile stations no protection whatsoever, Imlay stated.
Sumner explained, "The FCC claims that it continues to protect mobile stations from harmful interference, but it does so simply by defining whatever interference a mobile station might encounter from a notched BPL system as not harmful! None of the steps to limit the interference potential of BPL systems that the FCC took in this rulemaking proceeding reduce the likelihood of interference to the amateur service, and to this day the FCC has declined to enforce its rules even when protracted violations and interference have been documented."
FCC's brief also attempted to justify its presumption that a BPL radiated interfering signal decays at a rate of 40 dB per decade of distance. "A 'decade of distance' is a factor of 10," Imlay explained. "For example, if a victim receiver moves from 3-30 feet from the power lines (10 times further away), that is one decade of distance. For each decade of distance, the FCC believes that there is a 40 dB signal decay. In the HF bands, however, the evidence in the record shows that the signal decay is closer to 20 dB than 40 dB per decade of distance from the power lines. The FCC's brief claimed that there was conflicting evidence on the subject, but ARRL's view is that the FCC merely avoided consideration of the overwhelming evidence favoring the more conservative decay factor."
Imlay said the ARRL has asked the Court to order the FCC to "rethink the rules governing BPL and for the first time to take into account the evidence on the record concerning harmful interference to Amateur Radio." ARRL's reply brief is due for filing with the Court July 28, 2007. There is no date set yet for oral argument before the three-judge panel in Washington, DC.
| Previous: Huntsville to Host Global EmComm Conference in August | Next: Oklahoma ARES Members Assist with Floods |