[GCARC] Vanity Fee set to disappear

[Jeff Garth]

QST de W1AW

ARRL Bulletin 23  ARLB023

>From ARRL Headquarters

Newington CT  July 30, 2015

To all radio amateurs 

 

SB QST ARL ARLB023

ARLB023 Amateur Radio Vanity Call Sign Fee to Disappear in September

 

The Amateur Radio vanity call sign regulatory fee is set to disappear in the
next few weeks. According to the best-available information from FCC
sources, the first day that applicants will be able to file a vanity
application without having to pay a fee is Thursday, September 3. In
deciding earlier this year to drop the regulatory fee components for Amateur
Radio vanity call signs and General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS)
applications, the FCC said it was doing so to save money and personnel
resources. The Commission asserted that it costs more of both to process the
regulatory fees and issue refunds than the amount of the regulatory fee
payment.

 

"Our costs have increased over time, and now that the costs exceed the
amount of the regulatory fee, the increased relative administrative cost
supports eliminating this regulatory fee category," the FCC said in its
Report and Order, which appeared on July 21 in The Federal Register. "Once
[it's] eliminated, these licensees will no longer be financially burdened
with such payments, and the Commission will no longer incur these
administrative costs that exceed the fee payments."

 

The FCC raised the Amateur Service vanity call sign regulatory fee from
$16.10 to its current $21.40 for the 10-year license term in 2014. The $5.30
increase was the largest such fee hike in many years. In a typical fiscal
year, the FCC collected on the order of $250,000 in vanity call sign
regulatory fees.

 

The FCC said the revenue it would otherwise collect from such regulatory
fees "will be proportionally assessed on other wireless fee categories."
Congress has mandated that the FCC collect nearly

$340 million in regulatory fees from all services in fiscal year 2015.

 

 

D. Jeffrey Garth

621 Greenbriar Drive

Williamstown, NJ 08094-1149

73, KC2WCS

Club Publications

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