Notice of Purported Rationalization
I had no clue that they were redoing the rules for GMRS. Where can i find more info on this?
PRSG HomePage
is a good place to go.
The FCC Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is a long and complicated document. It makes claims that sound reasonable to people who don't know any better, or don't know the history.
It seeks to throttle GMRS down to where it is just another consumer item -- a service that won't be an alternative to cellular phones, won't cost the FCC anything, and won't attract circles of organized users who could make demands on the FCC. This is what it calls the "evolution of how people communicate."
But the FCC has authorized milions of bubble packs on the market that confuse FRS and GMRS, while boosting the cost of a GMRS license to an unfair level (after saying they would reduce it but never did). Any radio person could have told them these were dumb ideas. No public proceeding was ever held to examine the implications.
So most purchasers ignore licenses. This will increase. We can have a slow slide into the muck where nobody knows the rules, identifies their stations or cares to cooperate with others. Any person, group, dealer or big-box store can jam your repeater or put repeaters on the air and go to battle, without worrying that the FCC will revoke licenses that don't exist.
This is not the first time it has been tried. The previous time -- when it proposed to order all GMRS repeaters off the air to create a "Consumer Radio Service" -- the FCC walked into a storm of opposition that included much Congressional contact.
(The FCC said afterwards that it had "calibrated user sentiment" and would not pursue the Consumer Radio Service. Radio Shack was not amused. It came in with the FRS and the FCC adopted it.)
I wonder what will happen this time.