I'm sure there will always be available bands for amateur work, how usable they are is another story.

I only catch brief flashes of BPL off the net, I'm pretty sure it's doomed to failure, the infrastructure for proper transmission of high bandwidth data is already in place to all but the most isolated places, and the universal increase in the noise floor to those locations can't be justified by the population its serves. Satelite or directed line of site RF makes much more sense in those areas.

I'm just an observer from the outside but as far as the amateur radio spectrum goes I've always thought BPL was going to be the absolute dead end for <30mhz DX'ers, even at power. Broadband data looks just like noise to a receiver unless you have access to the data source, and if you do have access to the data source WTF are you using it for in the first place?! =P

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Good conversation and points.

The ironic thing about this is that much of the technology that BPL has its roots in was pioneered or heavily experimented with by radio amateurs in the 70s and 80s. I mean, much of the early technology and concepts that helped create the internet stemmed from packet radio and even radio teletype way back in the 40s and 50s..

I agree that there will always be legitimate spectrum for experimentation and recreational use, but the radio amateur hobby is very broad in scope and interests and certain bands are suitable for certain techniques while others are not, and the bands that are most at risk as far as the FCC reassigning them are the higher frequency bands that digital systems covet. A lot of commercial interests and big money salivating for more real estate. While I'm not a big user of those frequencies and never was except when I had only Technician privelages, I am all for protecting them. Actually, I take that back, one of my favorite bands is 6 meters (50Mhz) and it is just on the borderline of useability by localized commercial entities. It is the inbetween band because long distance communication is very sporadic (called sporadic E in fact) and instances of local users being interfered with by E signals is rare. But this is the fun of the band, I think. Many 6 meter enthusiasts literally sit near a computer and wait for spotters to announce an E opening when conditions are favorable. One old timey technique is to monitor broadcast television for ghost stations that pop up on locally unoccupied channels. I wonder if the end of analogue means that technique is nullified? I suppose it does because digital signals are either there or not, no snow.

 

Actually you can get periodic interference on digital RF transmissions just the same as you can analog ones especially one way ones, the effects are much more like jumping off a cliff than a gradual loss in signal quality though. Really tiny glitches in digital transmissions can look like mpeg artifacts, aka the blockies, or other subtle either unnoticed or unobservable glitches in the converted data stream.

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