In a significant departure from its earlier position, the Federal...

Chmn. Powell, FEMA Undersecy. Michael Brown said his agency would like to clarify its earlier filing in the BPL proceeding to “ensure that our filing is not misunderstood or misconstrued.” He said that while “certain distinct approaches” to BPL may have the potential to cause interference to FEMA’s HF radio emergency communications, the agency as it continued to study BPL hadn’t “concluded that there is a material interference problem or that all of the distinct technological approaches to BPL pose risk of interference. We expect that there may be ways to provide the public with benefits of BPL without compromising the emergency communications capabilities available to FEMA.” In its filing in response to the FCC’s BPL inquiry, FEMA had said BPL systems used radio frequency energy “on unshielded, unbalanced transmission lines,” resulting in unavoidable interference that would severely impair FEMA’s mission-essential HF radio operations in areas where BPL was deployed. “The purported benefits of BPL in terms of expanded services in certain communications sectors do not appear to outweigh the benefit to overall public of HF radio capability as presently used by government, broadcasting and public safety users,” FEMA had said. However, Brown told Powell that FEMA was “supportive of our national goals of extensively deploying broadband facilities and of a more robust electrical utility infrastructure. FEMA appreciates that BPL could be a major factor in achieving these objectives.”