What Rick's friend says is essentially what I believed until about a year ago. BPL made no sense economically, so why would anyone do it? I still don't know the answer to that question, but the fact is that its proponents are treating it seriously and so we have to, too. Dave K1ZZ -----Original Message----- From: Roderick, Rick (aol.com) Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2003 5:40 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: [ARRL-ODV:9506] Re: FCC's Commissioner Abernathy Praises BPL In a message dated 9/25/2003 3:25:32 PM Eastern Daylight Time, W5JBP writes:

Jim, this is a false concept. The BPL boys are playing it up, but in reality the farmer Jones are not going to get it. Let us say you have a farm or house five miles out of town. First off, they say that they will pull fiber to the last mile. Then the signal has to be injected, by pass all the pole pigs and amplified every 200 meters. This is a very large investment and the BPL people are just not going to do it.

I was called by one of the BPL people and he admitted that they were just going to "pick the low hanging fruit." So, the idea that every home in America will have BPL broad band is a public relations hype.

73

Jim Haynie, W5JBP

Interesting point. I had a ham that works for a co-op elec co tell me at a hamfest over the weekend that BPL will be so costly for the power co that it will only be provided in the cities and then quite limited for years due to the costs. What struck me was how unconcerned he was about the issue. He basically said that we (ARRL) were getting concerned over an issue that is not nearly as impacting of the masses as we've led people to believe. I didn't agree with him but thanked him for the info. Take that for what it's worth, as info from a ham that is an engineering mgr for one of the co-ops. 73, K5UR