[CW] ARRL and FCC proposal

[N2EY at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/22/07 9:56:36 PM Eastern Standard Time, n1ea at arrl.net 
writes:


> Can you believe this?
> 
> This is astounding.
> 
> http://www.qrz.com/ib-bin/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST&f=3&t=150129
> 

Be sure to get all the facts first:

1) The QRZ headline says "THE ROBOTS ARE COMING!" as if this is a sure thing.
It isn't - it's just a revision to an old proposal. 

2) ARRL filed RM-11306 some time back. It gathered overwhelming opposition,
something like 7 to 1 against. 

3) The recent "refarming" Report and Order that widened the 'phone subbands 
made a lot of the proposals of RM-11306 obsolete. So ARRL filed a revision.

4) Somebody in the law firm that works for ARRL messed up and sent the FCC a 
document that had mistakes in it. Biggest mistake was that it showed 97.221 
(c) as being deleted, when it was meant to be retained. Nobody at FCC picked up 
on the mistakes - they just put the document on ECFS.

5) A lot of folks are unaware of the error (yet) and are getting all upset.

6) Opposition to all versions of RM-11306 seems so widespread and growing 
that
it's a wonder ARRL even bothered.

7) (Here's the biggie): Under current rules, all sorts of data modes and 
semiautomatic operation are *already* allowed everywhere in the non-phone parts of 
the bands. Read 97.221 to 97.307 or so. For example, there's no specified 
maximum bandwidth for a data signal - the rules only say that an FSK signal must 
not use a shift of more than 1 kHz. 

IMHO, the whole "regulation by bandwidth" thing is a couple of good ideas 
poorly executed, poorly publicized and so widely misunderstood that the best 
thing now would be to drop the whole deal and start over.

73 de Jim, N2EY





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