South Eastern Repeater Association
rescinds controversial repeater tone policy
The South Eastern Repeater Association (SERA) Board of Directors has
rescinded a controversial policy that would have amended SERA's coordination
policy and guidelines to require CTCSS or DCS receive and transmit tones
on all new FM voice repeaters.
Existing voice repeaters would have had to comply by July 1, 2006. The
Board adopted the "all tone, all the time" policy during its
summer meeting in June. SERA President Roger Gregory, W4RWG, said the
SERA Board repealed the policy "after much discussion" on October
4.
"We may revisit this issue at a later date, but with input from
the membership," Gregory told ARRL. He said that while SERA received
many positive comments as well as negative ones, complaints from repeater
owners prompted the Board's change of heart on the tone policy.
"Some [repeaters] had been untoned for years without any interference
issues," he said. "They did not wish to tone. North Carolina,
South Carolina and Tennessee seemed to have more concerned repeater owners."
The largest Amateur Radio repeater coordinating body in the US, SERA
provides voluntary frequency coordination for repeaters in Georgia, South
Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and parts of
Virginia and West Virginia. In a letter on the SERA
Web site, Gregory called the tone requirement "just another tool
we thought was needed to help us to continue to do our job." He noted
that SERA has been requiring tones on 10-meter, 6-meter and 70-cm repeaters
"for years."
Some of those upset with SERA's June decision to require tones tried
to get the FCC involved. The Amateur
Repeater Society of East Tennessee (ARSET), which sprang up because
of the controversy, wanted the FCC to recognize it as the official coordinating
body for eastern Tennessee.
FCC Special Counsel for Enforcement Riley Hollingsworth said the Commission
does not recognize or certify specific coordinators in the Amateur Service,
as it does in the Land Mobile services, and had no plans to get involved
in the SERA controversy. But he said requiring tones is a good idea.
"From a spectrum efficiency standpoint, tones will be the wave of
the future and have been in regular use in the Land Mobile services for
decades," said Hollingsworth, who oversees Land Mobile as well as
Amateur Radio Service enforcement. He said if tones will cure an interference
case
in the Land Mobile services, he tells the parties to implement them.
"It is surprising that tone systems are not used more in the Amateur
Service, a service we expect to be on the leading edge of technology instead
of being wedded to old ways of doing things," Hollingsworth added.
"As for tones, it's only a matter of time, just as it was with transistors
and integrated circuits."
Source: ARRL Letter - courtesy of The
American Radio Relay League
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