[South Florida DX Association] ARLB025 ARRL seeks comment on draft "Bandwidth" petition

[Bill Marx]

> ZCZC AG25
> QST de W1AW  
> ARRL Bulletin 25  ARLB025
> From ARRL Headquarters  
> Newington CT  August 25, 2004
> To all radio amateurs 
> 
> SB QST ARL ARLB025
> ARLB025 ARRL seeks comment on draft "Bandwidth" petition
> 
> The ARRL wants members' comments on a planned petition to the FCC
> seeking to regulate amateur subbands by bandwidth rather than by
> mode. The ARRL Board of Directors adopted the petition's guiding
> principle in July 2002 and wrapped up its review of a draft petition
> late last month.
> 
> "The main objective is to make appropriate provision for digital
> modes in the HF amateur bands, while preserving amateurs'
> prerogatives to use the traditional modes," said ARRL CEO David
> Sumner, K1ZZ. "Regulation by Bandwidth" is the title of Sumner's "It
> Seems to Us . . ." editorial in the September issue of QST.
> 
> The ARRL Executive Committee decided to make a synopsis and
> explanation of the petition available to ARRL members before filing
> it with the FCC. The idea is to give anyone interested in the issue
> a chance to better understand the ARRL's proposal and the rationale
> behind it--mainly creating a regulatory environment more
> accommodating to newer technologies.
> 
> "The regulation of emission modes in Amateur Radio Service
> allocations is a limiting factor with respect to Amateur Radio
> experimentation," a synopsis of the petition concludes. "It leads to
> attempts to put new technology into a regulatory framework that was
> designed only to deal with older analog emissions." In order to
> implement digital technologies, an underlying assumption in the
> League's draft petition is to provide for an intermediate
> bandwidth--between what's needed for the legacy CW and phone
> modes--in the middle of certain bands.
> 
> As drafted, the ARRL's bandwidth petition would preserve
> double-sideband AM unchanged, but it would stop short of opening the
> phone bands to digital and other modes of the same bandwidth.
> 
> FCC rules now permit RTTY and data emissions throughout the HF CW
> subbands, although informal agreements typically keep RTTY and data
> signals out of those parts of the CW band generally used for CW. The
> ARRL's petition proposes to limit bandwidth in the CW subbands to
> 200 Hz, which also will accommodate data modes such as PSK31.
> 
> In addition, the League's proposal would limit bandwidth in the
> existing "RTTY/data subbands" to either 500 Hz or 3 kHz, with phone
> emissions specifically prohibited in certain subbands where 3 kHz
> would be permitted. Under the proposal, these would include
> 3650-3725, 7100-7125, 14,100-14,150 and 21,150-21,200 kHz.
> 
> "The reason for this is to encourage the development of higher-speed
> data communications in these subbands by preventing them from
> becoming de facto 'expanded phone bands.'" Sumner explained.
> 
> The new proposals take into account the ARRL's prior "Novice
> refarming" petition to expand some HF phone bands, included in the
> FCC Notice of Proposed Rule Making in WT Docket 04-140.
> 
> Amateurs typically won't have to be able to measure the bandwidth of
> their signals, Sumner says, since the bandwidths proposed are more
> than sufficient for "clean" signals using traditional HF modes.
> 
> The ARRL proposal would eliminate bandwidth restrictions in the
> 222-225 MHz band--beyond a requirement to keep signals confined
> within the band.
> 
> Sumner encouraged ARRL members to review the synopsis of the
> petition and the specific rule changes the League plans to propose.
> It is located on the web at,
> http://www.arrl.org/announce/bandwidth.html.
> 
> Direct questions or comments--favorable or otherwise--via e-mail at,
> bandwidth at arrl.org.  ARRL staff members will respond to any
> questions, while comments will be forwarded to your ARRL division
> director. Members also are welcome to comment directly to their ARRL
> directors, of which a list can be found on the web at,
> http://www.arrl.org/divisions/, and also listed on page 15 in QST.
> NNNN
> /EX
> 
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