Trevor M5AKA

ARRL lobbies for regulation by bandwidth

Nearly 30 years ago back in 1977 the ARRL fought tooth and nail to defeat an FCC proposal to regulate Amateur Radio by Bandwidth rather than by Mode. Now they have changed their tune and are lobbying the FCC to regulate by bandwidth.
73 Trevor M5AKA

ARRL FILES REGULATION-BY-BANDWIDTH PETITION WITH FCC

The ARRL has formally asked the FCC to adopt the League's plan to segment the Amateur Radio bands solely by emission bandwidth rather than by mode.

The Petition for Rule Making, filed November 14, recommends what the ARRL called "a shift in regulatory philosophy" that would encourage and facilitate the development and refinement of digital techniques and advanced technologies. At the same time, the League said, accommodating new technologies would not come at the expense of current operating modes, including double-sideband AM phone.

"This petition seeks for the Amateur Radio Service the flexibility to experiment with new digital transmission methods and types to be developed in the future," the League's petition said, "while permitting present operating modes to continue to be used for as long as there are radio amateurs who wish to use them." The ARRL said the changes it suggests will also update the FCC's rules and eliminate the need for "cumbersome procedures" to determine whether a new digital mode is legal under Part 97

The ARRL's regulation-by-bandwidth plan is far from a done deal. In order for it to be adopted, the FCC first must put the League's Petition for Rule Making on public notice and invite formal public comments. A subsequent Notice of Proposed Rule Making would kick off a further round of formal comments. Ultimately, the FCC would have to issue a Report and Order putting the changes into place and setting an effective date.

The League conceded that its regulation-by-bandwidth regime would place increased responsibility on the amateur community to establish workable, accepted band plans, but it expressed confidence that such an effort would be successful.

The petition filed this week has been in the works for some time now. The ARRL Board of Directors adopted the petition's guiding principle in 2002 and invited comments from the Amateur Radio community in the summer of 2004. The proposal reflects expert input from the ARRL Ad Hoc HF Digital Committee as well as from ARRL staff. Comments from League members and an ARRL Executive Committee review led to further fine tuning.

The ARRL wants the FCC to replace the table at §97.305(c) with a new one that segment bands by bandwidths ranging from 200 Hz to 100 kHz. Unaffected by the ARRL's recommendations, if they're adopted, would be 160 and 60 meters. Subbands in other bands below 29 MHz would accommodate maximum emission bandwidths of 200, 500 or 3.5 kHz, with an exception of 9 kHz for AM phone.

The League's petition "seeks to facilitate and encourage the development, refinement and use of new digital technologies without the regulatory remnants developed at a time when the principal emissions used in the Amateur Radio Service were Morse telegraphy and single- or double-sideband amplitude-modulated telephony." Part 97 rules need to permit higher data rates between 1.8 and 450 MHz to encourage development of digital multimedia technology, "which has great promise for improving and fostering more effective emergency and disaster relief communications," the petition asserted.

"This petition does not favor one mode at the expense of another," the ARRL concluded in urging FCC adoption. "It merely allows expansion of the repertoire of options that amateurs may pursue compatibly."

ARRL CEO David Sumner, K1ZZ, discussed the subject of regulating by bandwidth in three "It Seems to Us . . ." QST editorials: "Regulation by Bandwidth" in September 2004, "Narrowing the Bandwidth Issues" in April 2005 and "Self Regulation" in October 2005.

The text of the ARRL's Petition for Rule Making is on the ARRL Web site

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