As you may recall, the FCC Report and Order authorizing access broadband over power line adopted rules requiring Access BPL system operators to establish a centralized, publicly accessible database for Access BPL notifications listing, among other things, operating frequencies being used.
In May, the United Telecom Council notified the FCC that it has designed and implemented a database that would enable Access BPL operators to comply with these requirements. The notification letter included a petition signed by 35 Access BPL companies. After the UTC proposal was placed on Public Notice, all comments and replies supported UTC as the database manager.
Last week the FCC issued a Public Notice (DA 05-2701) officially naming UTC as the database manager and setting deadlines for BPL operators to submit information to the database.
The FCC established Nov. 19, 2005 as the effective Section 15.615 (a)-(e). The Public Notice states "All information on Access BPL systems as required by 47 C.F.R. Section 15.615(a) must be entered into the database and be available to the public by Nov. 19, 2005. BPL operators should contact UTC at Drop me a note at admin@utc.org
to receive a user name and password for administrative access. This information is required for BPL operators to enter the necessary information regarding their BPL systems into the database." Public access is available via the Internet at http://www.bpldatabase.org. No log-in information is required to access this site.
