Let me chime in a bit here, if I may.

I work for ARRL, the National Association for Amateur Radio. I manage ARRL's technical laboratory and I have been involved in ARRL's concerns about BPL for several years now.

To get a bit outside my normal technical scope, I will first offer a personal opinion about Amateur Radio. Although Amateur Radio does have a hobby aspect, its value as a licensed radio service extends personal communications. Just as an example of the many ways that Amateur Radio makes important contributions to the public good, see "The Value of the Amateur Radio Service" (at http://p1k.arrl.org/~ehare/bpl/emcomm.html).

You will find a more polished presentation in the information at the ARRL Public Relations Department (at http://www.arrl.org/pio).

If this issue were only about Amateur Radio, and BPL were the only way that broadband could be delivered, I think that the issue would be easy to decide. However, the spectrum that BPL uses covers 2 to 80 MHz, a range that encompasses not only Amateur Radio, but CB, international shortwave broadcasting, and a host of government and commercial users.

The upper end of that range also extends into public-safety communications between 30 and 50 MHz, used by a number of police, fire and ambulances, to name a few. Although some of that operation is migrating to other spectrum, in some cases, the choice to use 30-50 MHz is intentional, as it allows the best coverage in hilly terrain. Above 54 MHz, BPL can use frequencies allocated to television broadcasting.

One need to look no farther than the video and audio recordings of BPL interference to see that if not done correctly, BPL has a significant local interference potential, as shown in the video at http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/aud-vid.html.

The range between 2 and 30 MHz is unique, in that it is the only spectrum that allows stations separated by thousands of miles to communicate with each other without the need for intervening technology (i.e., wires, fiber, repeaters or satellites).