Three items on BPL: 1. There's a new BPL story at the top of the ARRL Web news crawl: "World's Broadcasters Join Anti-BPL Chorus" Of course we're not going to report it publicly, but as I reported in ARRL-ODV:9523 on September 26, Walt Ireland, WB7CSL, of the ARRL Technical Relations Office was on the US delegation at the Geneva meeting of ITU-R Working Party 6E and helped influence the outcome. 2. At the same time a CISPR (International Special Committee on Radio Interference) annual meeting was being held in South Korea (22 September - 2 October). The IARU is represented in CISPR by its EMC Adviser, Christian Verholt, OZ8CY. Christian reports that the changes required in a CISPR EMC standard in order to cover Power Line Telecommunications (PLT, which is the more common term for what the FCC insists on calling BPL) were discussed, but "it was decided not to circulate the new draft for vote, but only for comments. This will delay the process for half a year. The representatives from the PLT community were not happy with this." Of course, delay is costly to them; even those favoring investment in BPL/PLT generally acknowledge that there is a narrow window of opportunity, probably closing by 2008 or so, to recoup the investment before it is overtaken by fiber-to-the-home or other superior technologies. Christian was able to express IARU's concerns about PLT to the CISPR Steering Committee and reports that our concerns were supported by other members. He concludes, "The awareness of potential problems related to PLT has increased and the support for PLT has decreased. Unfortunately IARU and a few national authorities are still the only voices asking for protection of radio services. The IARU is involved in all the committees making the wishes of radio amateurs heard. It is still important for us to take part in the discussion, otherwise the manufacturers will be more concerned about the cost of testing etc instead of protecting the radio spectrum." Christian's considerable contributions are not often recognized outside the IARU "inner circle" and so I thought I should mention them to you, since the ARRL's financial support of the IARU makes it possible for him to represent us. 3. Also in ARRL-ODV:9523 I mentioned that we had launched a paper into the US preparatory process for the meeting of ITU-R Working Party 1A that begins at the end of the month. We had anticipated that the BPL proponents might block the paper from going forward. However, this afternoon we learned that the FCC has agreed to let a somewhat shortened version of the paper entitled "Compatibility between the amateur services and high-speed data rate telecommunication systems using electrical power lines" go forward as an initial US input on the subject. The paper acknowledges the very sensitive receivers used in the amateur service and the fact that amateurs cannot choose to locate their antennas far from power lines. It is still subject to final editing and it is still possible that it might be short-circuited before submission, so for now please keep this to ourselves and keep your fingers crossed. I'll share the paper with you when it's official. Work on a separate IARU submission to WP 1A is continuing. 73, Dave K1ZZ