ARRL asks co-ordinators to co-ordinate D-Star

The American Radio Relay League has, at least tacitly, endorsed the JARL-developed D-STAR digital voice and data communications scheme for relay system use on the VHF and UHF ham bands.

Its also asking current FM repeater coordinators to both recognize and accommodate it and other digital voice ciphers through the formal co-ordination process.

ARNewsline's Bill Pasternak, WA6ITF, has more:

Though D-STAR and, to a lesser degree, APCO 25 protocols are gaining in popularity as a replacement for analog FM repeaters, some co-ordinators have come to wonder to what extent either of these systems fall within the FCC definition of an Amateur service relay device? A repeater if you will.

But the ARRL is leaving that to be decided by the FCC at some later date if the regulatory agency ever chooses to do so.

For its part the ARRL Board has requested that co-ordinators begin now to extend their efforts to recommend operating channels to digital voice systems and to consider the bandwidths that they actually required for successful operation.

Currently only Icom supplies D-STAR ham radio gear but other manufacturers are expected to quickly jump on the D-STAR bandwagon. Especially now that there are more than 60 D-STAR repeaters in operation across the United states and more on their way.

The main reason APCO 25 is lagging so far behind D-STAR is the licensing fee required by its codec patent owner. While the P 25 platform is public domain, the encoder decoder is not and carries with it a fairly steep cost. On the other hand D-STAR requires no license fee be paid. The Japan Amateur Radio League saw fit to put its technology fully in the public domain. Anyone with the ability to do so can design a codec for it, but it must be made available to anyone to use.

Bill Pasternak, WA6ITF
Amateur Radio Newsline

• How the more than fifty repeater co-ordinators nation wide will react to this ARRL Board request to co-ordinate digital repeaters will take some time to be known. The ARRL Board did thank all existing VHF/UHF frequency co-ordination groups for their efforts to promote orderly use of Amateur Radio frequencies.

Source: Amateur Radio Newsline, ARRL