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Wyoming | The RFI issue with radio services is one issue, to be certain. Since I've been a ham for a long time, it is one of my pet issues too.
From the flip side, tho, comes the issue of being a customer of such a contraption. What the BPL engineers gloss over, because they were "true Internet believers" instead of well-rounded EE's, is that BPL is also subject to interference. A moderately high-powered HF radio will cause RFI to BPL. And here's where things get interesting:
Because most any station operating at a power level sufficient to cause BPL interference will be licensed (ham, fixed point, mobile, whatever), guess who wins in the RFI complaint contest? Well, the FCC is pretty clear on this from past decisions: licensed operators have precedence over unlicensed operations every time. BPL is completely unlicensed.
This means that BPL users who have a beef with the local ham, licensed CB or other radio service can tell their complaint to a fencepost.
Then there's the issue of power companies supporting this stuff. Power companies have plenty of smart people in their ranks, but running an ISP is a whole new game for them.
And then, lastly, here's this:
It will be only a short matter of time before someone with more motivation than I comes up with the idea to build a BPL receiver and start sniffing packets off the powerlines. It hasn't been done yet (that I know of), but because it is radiating all over the place, the job of someone intercepting your IP communications won't be difficult. Unlike 802.11 wireless LANs, these guys won't need directional antennas. They'll just sit on the street with a whip antenna and scarf down everthing that is on the BPL -- which in a dense neighborhood, will be quite the haul. Aaaaaannd... wanna know something?
It won't be illegal, per FCC regs going back to, oh, 1935 or so.
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Broadband over Power Lines
