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THE COMPUTING UNPLUGGED INTERVIEW
A BPL manufacturer responds to all the complaints
By David Gewirtz
Poor Chano Gomez! When he pitched us an interview on Broadband-over-Powerline (BPL), little did this BPL manufacturer know that he'd be touching off a firestorm of debate. Two months and more than a dozen articles later, Chano's graciously consented to another interview, this time to answer the charges against BPL from its detractors.
We have to give special "props" to Chano. Not only did he agree to step up and answer some tough questions, he also did so while on vacation in Europe. So, special thanks go out to him for taking the time to help us understand this issue more fully.
David: Let's start by being quite general. From your perspective, do the claims of the ARRL have any merit at all? If so, what? If not, why not?
Chano: Before answering that, let me clarify two points: the problem of making general statements about BPL technology and what the real debate is about.
Making general statements about BPL technology is like making general statements about wireless technology, including WiFi, WIMAX, 3G, etc. There are several different vendors of powerline technology, each one with unique characteristics.
Also, the BPL industry has evolved technically and at tremendous speed, with each new generation of products improving over the previous ones, both in terms of interference mitigation techniques and robustness against external interference. Most BPL vendors listen to the feedback provided by the rest of the industry (including the ARRL) and are continuously improving their products.
So, in summary, not all BPL products are the same, and BPL technology from 2001 is not the same as BPL technology from 2006.
After reading some of the comments from your readers, a person could get the false impression that the current debate regarding the BPL industry is based around the claims of two irreconcilable camps, one of them claiming that "BPL is totally safe and does not interfere with any radio service" and another claiming that "all kinds of BPL technology will interfere with existing radio services, threatening emergency service, ham operators, etc."
In practice, all industry experts (including ARRL and BPL vendors) agree on the main principles, although we disagree on specific details.
Let me give an example: we all agree that a BPL system transmitting with a power level of 1000 (arbitrary units, this is an example, after all) would have a 10% probability of interfering with ham radio users while a BPL system transmitting with power level of 1 (arbitrary units) would have a 0.001% probability of interfering. The first example would obviously be unacceptable for the ham radio community, while the second example would make the BPL industry unfeasible.
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