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Summer 2004 Issue |
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NTIA BPL Study Summary |
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On April 27, 2004 the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) released a study on BPL (Broadband over Power Lines), Study 04-413. The NTIA is a government agency and its website describes it as: …an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, is the Executive Branch’s principal voice on domestic and international telecommunications and information technology issues. NTIA works to spur innovation, encourage competition, help create jobs and provide consumers with more choices and better quality telecommunications products and services at lower prices.1 The NTIA often works in conjunction with the FCC on matters relating to the radio spectrum, especially allocations for government and military entities. The NTIA is often on the cutting edge and was instrumental in the development of spectrum auctions.2 For example, in 2003 the FCC was ready to grant a new band of frequencies to amateur radio operators, the 60-meter band, but the NTIA stepped in at the last moment and restructured the allocation to protect primary government users in the band.3 The intended impartiality of the NTIA can be noted in several places in the study, as evidenced by the following statement:
[The] NTIA has oriented its study to find a
solution that accommodates BPL systems while appropriately managing the
risk of interference to radio systems.4
The study is broken into Phase One and Phase
Two. Report 04-413 is Phase One. Phase Two will be released at a future
date and will address skywave (ionospheric) propagation of signals and
issues concerning aggregation of signals from mature deployments of BPL.5
On June 4, 2004 the NTIA filed comments with the FCC in response to FCC ET
Docket 04-37 in which it included in a technical appendix the most
significant issues considered in the comprehensive Phase Two study.6 Click here to return to Summer 2004 highlights Click here to subscribe to VHF _________________ © Copyright 2004, CQ Communications, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced or republished, including posting to a website, in part or in whole, by any means, without the express written permission of the publisher, CQ Communications, Inc. Hyperlinks to this page are permitted.
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