[South Florida DX Association] FCC Resumes Processing Amateur Service Applications

[Jeff Beals]

> FCC Resumes Processing Amateur Service Applications
> NEWINGTON, CT, Nov 11, 2004--The FCC is back in the business of 
> issuing Amateur Service license grants after a shutdown of several 
> days. The Commission's Wireless Telecommunications Bureau (WTB) last 
> week halted processing of Amateur Service applications after a 
> Universal Licensing System (ULS) computer programming problem caused 
> application grants to go awry. Besides creating an application 
> backlog, the glitch resulted in the issuance of nearly 130 
> out-of-sequence Group D (2x3) amateur call signs. Those erroneous 
> grants now have been set aside, and licensees have been issued new, 
> in-sequence call signs. 
> 
> "The Commission appears to have corrected the earlier erroneous call 
> sign assignments," reports ARRL Volunteer Examiner Coordinator 
> Manager Bart Jahnke, W9JJ, who's been closely monitoring the 
> situation. "In the past 24 hours, the FCC has issued 1915 Amateur 
> Service grants, some of which were corrections for the earlier call 
> sign anomalies." Jahnke says the rest of the grants represented the 
> application backlog and an initial run of some 600 applications for 
> license renewal, license modification, vanity call signs and 
> administrative updates the WTB ran November 10 to check out the 
> system. 
> 
> WTB personnel auditing the results of that initial run apparently 
> were satisfied that the trouble wouldn't resurface and removed an 
> "alert" posted on the ULS Web site five days earlier to announce the 
> suspension of Amateur Service grants. The FCC is closed for 
> Veterans' Day, November 11--a federal holiday--and no additional 
> applications will be processed until November 12. 
> 
> Jahnke says that each of the 130 or so licensees issued 
> out-of-sequence call signs will get a set-aside letter from the FCC 
> via Certified Mail, pointing out the assignment error and listing 
> the corrected call sign. The problem seems to have affected only new 
> 2x3 call sign grants. 
> 
> The 130 affected licensees can learn their new call signs by 
> searching the ULS database by licensee name or by FCC Registration 
> Number (FRN), if they know it. Web call sign servers may not yet 
> reflect the newest ULS call sign grants. Records of the erroneous 
> call sign grants will be maintained in the ULS archive. 
> 
> The difficulties began in late October, when a ULS software change 
> shunted all amateur applications from the nation's VECs into 
> "Pending 2" status and flagged them for manual review without any 
> justification. Attempts to correct the error only seemed to make 
> things worse, however. 
> 
> After regrouping, the WTB thought it had things under control by 
> November 2, and it reprocessed all the applications in the queue. 
> That time, the system not only failed to grant some routine requests 
> for new sequential call signs but erroneously began issuing 
> out-of-sequence Group D call signs from brand-new call sign blocks 
> in several districts. At that point, the WTB stopped amateur 
> processing altogether. 
> 
> While the first and third call districts were unaffected, the system 
> jumped from issuing call signs in the KC2Nxx sequence to the WQ2Axx 
> sequence, Jahnke said. It also had assigned WQ4xxx, WQ5xxx, WQ7xxx 
> and WQ9xxx call signs. In the eighth district, there was a gap 
> between KD8xxx to KM8xxx call signs, while in the tenth district the 
> Commission went from KC0Txx to WI0Axx. In the sixth district, the 
> sequence shifted from KG6Wxx to KI6Axx. 
> 
> Despite the processing error, Jahnke emphasized, the anomalous Group 
> D call sign grants were legal to use on the air. 



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