Ever since the establishment of the Rural Electrification
Administration by Franklin Roosevelt back in May of 1935,
America has been served by a nearly universal electrical grid. A
new technology, Broadband-over-Powerline (BPL), intends to
provide high-speed Internet service over that grid, so that
everywhere there’s power, there’s also the possibility of high-
speed Internet. But what if, at the flick of a switch, radios
stopped working? What if police radios, emergency response
radios, fire radios, aircraft communications radios, radios used
in commercial communications, and even ham radios just stopped
working? This is exactly what opponents of Broadband-over-
Powerline claim could happen if BPL were allowed to be
implemented on a wide-spread basis. Is it true? Is BPL the
helpful key to nearly universal high-speed Internet access or a
technology that could cripple our critical radio frequency
infrastructure? This is the question that we set out to answer.
David conducted a comprehensive, 12-article study of