Ofcom Power Line Telecommunications statement

On Wednesday September 2 the UK regulator Ofcom published a statement on their website regarding Power Line Telecommunications (PLT).

The statement says

"On the evidence, Ofcom has not so far found that there is a breach of the EMC essential requirements."

This will surely seem unbelievable to those many radio listeners who have their enjoyment of radio shows ruined by the interference from PLT/PLA Data-Over-Mains devices.
These units have been found to spoil radio reception up to 250 metres away from the house they were installed in.

The Ofcom statement also says

"There are many other users of the HF Band including long range aeronautical and oceanic communications, the Ministry of Defence and international broadcasters. Ofcom has not received complaints of interference to these services."

While it is probably true that ocean going vessels far from land, aircraft at 30,000 feet or our troops in Afghanistan may not have detected the high level of interference from PLT devices installed in some UK homes, the assertion that no complaints were received regarding interference to International Broadcasters is completely untenable.

Data-Over-Mains/PLT devices such as those supplied as part of the BT Vision package have been shown to cause severe interference to the International Broadcast bands.

To quote from Personal Computer World magazine December 2007:
"Mains wiring acts as an aerial when passing radio-frequency data signals and, as we have reported before there are fears about the cummulative effect in cities if the technology gets taken up on the same scale as WiFi."

Ofcom PLT Statement
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/radiocomms/ifi/enforcement/plt/

UKQRM is a group fighting this radio interference
http://www.ukqrm.org/

Homeplug user – 'should I feel guilty about ham radio?'
http://www.southgatearc.org/news/august2009/
should_i_feel_guilty_about_ham_radio.htm