By Cassimir Medford

A bill wending its way through the United States Congress would force a regulatory agency to determine whether ham radio operators are on the right frequency or just full of static.

Amateur radio operators claim that broadband over power line (BPL) technology is polluting the airwaves used by ham radio fans as well as emergency services.

U.S. Representative Mike Ross (D-Arkansas), a ham radio enthusiast, reintroduced the Emergency Amateur Radio Interference Protection Act, the 2007 version of a bill that was included in the ill-fated Telecommunications Act, which died in the U.S. Senate last year.

The bill gets right into the middle of a high-stakes battle between a small army of investors, vendors, and power utilities heavily invested in BPL, and the Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL), a ham radio group based in Newington, Connecticut.

Mainstream vendors such as IBM, Motorola, and Google, along with about two dozen startups, are trying to iron out the technical and regulatory glitches in the technology.

But the ARRL has been wall-papering the FCC with complaints about specific BPL deployments creating emissions that interfere with ham radio signals (see Group Says BPL Pollutes Spectrum).

FCC Bias

Last month the ARRL accused Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin of bias in his presentation of BPL as an emerging technology. The group claimed that Mr. Martin was regurgitating incorrect information published by a BPL lobbying group, the United Power Line Council, in a speech he gave at GeorgetownUniversity last November.

The group claimed the FCC chairman’s presentation included secondhand data from BPL deployments that had been discontinued or completely abandoned up to two years before he made his presentation. Some of the information about the terminations was publicly available, the group claimed.

The new bill calls for the FCC to do a comprehensive study within 90 days after the date of the passage and enactment of the bill.

The bill requires the FCC to produce new, improved rules governing BPL service transmission. It also calls for the FCC to come up with a safe distance that will guarantee no frequency interference from BPL emissions.

The ARRL, which claims 160,000 members, conducts field tests in areas where BPL systems have been deployed or beta tested to assess the emissions leakage level (see Shock Radio for BPL Firm).

The company has been outspoken in its criticism of two deployments in particular. A commercial deployment in Manassas, Virginia, has come under fire along with a test deployment in Briarcliff Manor, New York.

The group says tests conducted on both deployments by its members have detected interference at distances of hundreds of feet from overhead modems.