BPL Court Appeal, Intervenor's statement in lieu of brief

Greetings. I have received, as did WilmerHale, our lawyers in the BPL case, the attached statement of the National Association of Broadcasters and the Association of Maximum Service Television. This was filed in lieu of an intervenor's brief. This is a bit of a surprise. We expected at the time that NAB and MSTV intervened that they would either adopt our brief wholesale, or file their own. As you can see from the statement, they did neither. Jon Frankel at WlimerHale reports that it took a good deal of persuasion on WilmerHale's part to get them to even file this statement. At one point, apparently, they were going to file nothing at all. All that said, and surely enough, the lack of enthusiasm of the only intervenors on our side of the fence is manifest as the result of this statement instead of a stand-alone brief, what they DID say is exactly what we would want them to say. They say that they intervened in our support because they were concerned that the FCC failed to give adequate consideration to the impact that the liberal BPL rules would have on the digital TV transition, and that they had done a study that determined that BPL had a "signficant threat of interference" to DTV reception if adjacent to or within a TV channel of a local VHF DTV station. They say that they agree with ARRL that the case should be remanded (the relief we asked for) and that, as we argued, FCC had a solution (limit BPL to the band 30-50 MHz) that would have protected licensed services. So, while NAB and MSTV didn't say what they had to say very strongly, they said all the right things and none of the wrong things. They called the 30-50 MHz solution "MSTV's reasonable solution" when in fact it was ours first, but who really cares? The point is, their filing is completely consistent with our argument and the requested remedy (remand for adequate consideration of reasonable alternatives that protect licensed services). Not too bad. The next applicable procedural date, and the really important one, is that FCC's brief is due July 2. We will have an analysis of it for you, and perhaps e-copies, long before the Board meeting. Call or e-mail with any questions. Good weekend to all. 73, Chris W3KD ________________________________________________________________________ AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at AOL.com.
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