On September 20th, 2016 I read an article on Yahoo's fiance pages about AT&T's latest foray into transmitting high-speed data over conventional electric transmission lines. The Yahoo article goes on to say that AT&T has "developed a new technology it calls AirGig, which links up to standard power lines and uses a special transmitter to deliver super-fast gigabit internet wirelessly." As many of you probably know this is not AT&T's first attempt to bring BPL to the masses. The ARRL published a news article on it's website on September 21st, 2016 which reminds us of the previous efforts to establish BPL and the previous ARRL opposition to that technology.
This time the ARRL seems to be taking a less hostile approach to the technology ,claiming that the new millimeter wave based technology, operating in the 30 to 300 GHZ range should cause little interference to Amateur Radio. The ARRL article states "that it is not likely that the AT&T technology will even use Amateur Radio bands, so there is little reason for concern even among those amateurs who use spectrum above 24 GHz."
I'm sure that there will be lots of discussions about the pros and cons of BPL reignited by this newest incarnation of BPL but what struck me as I was reading the articles was where were the hams in the development of this technology?
If this is an RF technology, shouldn't we be the champions of it while we protect our interests at the same time? Or is the reality such that we are we no longer at the forefront of technology? If this is true, why and who can we blame?
Lastly, shouldn't we be concerned about all potential sources of pollution to the radio spectrum and not dismiss those sources simply because they are outside of our bands? I can't think of a better way to demonstrate our professionalism and service oriented nature then by preserving our threatened natural resource.
I'd like to hear the opinions about this. Please feel free to comment.
73,
Ed N3EML
The Yahoo article can be found here, http://finance.yahoo.com/news/t-invented-way-power-lines-202213172.html?.tsrc=daily_mail
The ARRL article can be found here, http://www.arrl.org/news/at-t-s-new-airgig-not-your-father-s-bpl
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