[TNham] SERA Rescinds tone policy

[Greg Williams]

This is on the ARRL web site (with link to ARSETs page):

http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2004/10/15/4/?nc=1

SouthEastern Repeater Association Rescinds Controversial Repeater Tone
Policy  

NEWINGTON, CT, Oct 15, 2004--The SouthEastern Repeater Association
(SERA) Board of Directors has rescinded a controversial policy that
would have amended SERA's coordination policy and guidelines to require
CTCSS or DCS receive and transmit tones on all new FM voice repeaters.
Existing voice repeaters would have had to comply by July 1, 2006. The
Board adopted the "all tone, all the time" policy during its summer
meeting in June. SERA President Roger Gregory, W4RWG, said the SERA
Board repealed the policy "after much discussion" on October 4. 

"We may revisit this issue at a later date, but with input from the
membership," Gregory told ARRL. He said that while SERA received many
positive comments as well as negative ones, complaints from repeater
owners prompted the Board's change of heart on the tone policy. 

"Some [repeaters] had been untoned for years without any interference
issues," he said. "They did not wish to tone. North Carolina, South
Carolina and Tennessee seemed to have more concerned repeater owners." 

The largest Amateur Radio repeater coordinating body in the US, SERA
provides voluntary frequency coordination for repeaters in Georgia,
South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and
parts of Virginia and West Virginia. In a letter on the SERA Web site,
Gregory called the tone requirement "just another tool we thought was
needed to help us to continue to do our job." He noted that SERA has
been requiring tones on 10-meter, 6-meter and 70-cm repeaters "for
years." 

Some of those upset with SERA's June decision to require tones tried to
get the FCC involved. The Amateur Repeater Society of East Tennessee
(ARSET), which sprang up because of the controversy, wanted the FCC to
recognize it as the official coordinating body for eastern Tennessee. 

FCC Special Counsel for Enforcement Riley Hollingsworth said the
Commission does not recognize or certify specific coordinators, as it
does in the Land Mobile services and had no plans to get involved in the
SERA controversy. But he said requiring tones is a good idea. 

"From a spectrum efficiency standpoint, tones will be the wave of the
future and have been in regular use in the Land Mobile services for
decades," said Hollingsworth, who oversees Land Mobile as well as
Amateur Radio Service enforcement. He said if tones will cure an
interference case in the Land Mobile services, he tells the parties to
implement them. 

"It is surprising that tone systems are not used more in the Amateur
Service, a service we expect to be on the leading edge of technology
instead of being wedded to old ways of doing things," Hollingsworth
added. "As for tones, it's only a matter of time, just as it was with
transistors and integrated circuits." 

The SERA Repeater Journal reported the move in its August issue.
Repeater Journal Editor Gary Pearce, KN4AQ, said then that the point of
the tone policy was to stop "ongoing complaints and skirmishes" between
co-channel neighbors running carrier-access repeaters.

Gregory S. Williams
k4hsm at knology.net