Many, if not all, of the BPL designs that have been deployed to
date suffer from a number of technological weaknesses. Perhaps
the most critical of these is that BPL is seriously degraded by
nearby transmissions from low-powered transmitters from sources
like Amateur Radio or CB. In several BPL cities, amateurs have
done experimentation that shows that as little as 5 watts of
power from a nearby radio transmitter can seriously degrade the
performance of BPL. In some cases, the interference logged off a
BPL user, requiring a reconnection to the network. This fatal
flaw will seriously limit the way that BPL can be deployed and
will decrease the reliability of a BPL system in any area where
it is possible that nearby radio transmitters could be
operating. Under the FCC's rules, BPL is an unlicensed device
that must accept any interference caused to it by authorized
radio services. In the past, and through decades of experience,
such interference is rare to other broadband services, such as
DSL, cable or satellit