[GCARC] FCC ULS will not return until September 10

[Jeff Garth]

QST de W1AW

ARRL Bulletin 29  ARLB029

>From ARRL Headquarters

Newington CT  September 8, 2015

To all radio amateurs 

 

SB QST ARL ARLB029

ARLB029 FCC Now Says ULS, Other Systems, Will Not Return Until September 10

 

The FCC has announced that its Universal Licensing System (ULS) and some
other website applications remain offline for maintenance, but the
Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) is now back in service and the
Electronic Document Management System (EDOCS) should be available in a short
time. The remaining computer system upgrades scheduled to have been
completed by today, September 8, now are not expected to be done until
September 10, the FCC said in a Public Notice. As the ULS outage continues,
it will not be possible to file any Amateur Radio applications, including
examination session documents, or conduct any license or application
searches.

 

"Over Labor Day weekend, a dedicated FCC team worked day and night to
complete major IT upgrades," the FCC's Chief Information Officer David A.
Bray, said in a statement. "This work included physically moving more than
200 different legacy servers out of FCC's headquarters to a commercial
service provider." This move - a cost-saving measure, Bray explained - ran
into trouble when it was determined that additional cabling was needed to
complete the transition. "Unfortunately, this delayed completion of all of
the system upgrades - even with the FCC team working around the clock
throughout the holiday weekend," Bray explained.

 

While the requirement to pay a regulatory fee for Amateur Radio vanity call
sign applications officially ended on September 3, prospective vanity
applicants now will have to wait until the ULS is up and running again to
file an application for an available call sign. The FCC has told ARRL that
the approximately 18-day vanity call sign waiting period will remain in
place "for now."

 

ARRL VEC Manager Maria Somma, AB1FM, said a lot of candidates and volunteer
examiners have begun asking why new call signs or license upgrades have not
yet been issued.

 

"We have a huge back log in our filing system that continues to grow!" she
said. "We already have approximately 75 examination sessions and over 500
applications waiting to be released to FCC."

 

Bray said it took seven moving vans to contain the servers being relocated.
"With a massive server move of this scale - even with detailed planning,
independent verification, and backup plans - the opportunity always exists
for surprises, especially with legacy IT systems, nearly 400 program
applications, and hundreds of servers,"

he pointed out.

 

The project will relocate the FCC's "legacy" computer systems to a
commercial service provider, helping to reduce maintenance costs, improve
"resiliency," and allow the FCC to shift many of its legacy applications to
the cloud, as it has done with its Consumer Help Desk.

 

The FCC said in its Public Notice that it anticipates all systems and
databases to be back online by 1200 UTC on September 10. By that time, it
said, the Commission's website "will have returned to normal operations,
with full content and search capabilities available." FCC voicemail and
e-mail also should be back by then too.

 

"We will continue to work diligently and provide updates on these IT
upgrades," Bray said. "The entire FCC team and I truly appreciate your
patience and understanding as we work to complete all of the upgrades."

 

D. Jeffrey Garth

621 Greenbriar Drive

Williamstown, NJ 08094-1149

73, KC2WCS

Club Publications

 <http://www.w2mmd.org> www.w2mmd.org

 

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