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For What it's Worth …
© 2007 CQ Communications, Inc.,
All Rights Reserved
"Nobody's Right If
Everybody's Wrong" "Nobody's right if everybody's wrong…" The line comes from a 1960s rock song, and it's brought to mind by the current uproar between FISTS, the society for code preservation, and the ARRL, the national association for amateur radio, over the League's recent changes to its own petition to the FCC for "regulation by bandwidth" instead of operating mode. The CW enthusiasts in FISTS see the proposal as opening the door for digital "robot" stations, popping up unpredictably across the CW bands and disrupting code contacts in progress. The ARRL apparently sees the changes as necessary to prevent Technicians from discovering that the "regulation by bandwidth" proposal, if adopted in its original form, would permit them to operate data modes on HF and even digital voice at the top ends of what are now the CW subbands on 40 and 15 meters. We see a whole host of problems that really have little, if anything, to do with the subject of the discussions that are clogging up eHam, qrz.com and the FCC's Electronic Comment Filing System. Everybody's Wrong * The FISTS folks missed the major point of the ARRL's action, which was to do a complete turnaround on the regulation by bandwidth issue; their contention that the League intended to permit unattended digital stations to transmit signals as wide as 3 kHz on the HF bands (as opposed to the current 500 Hz limitation) may or may not have been wrong, but it is not much different from what was proposed initially. While FISTS did confirm the content of the proposal with the FCC, it would have been better-advised -- before issuing a widespread "call to action!" -- to check with ARRL leadership to make sure that what was filed was what was intended. In fact, the ARRL filed an "erratum" with the FCC, claiming the provision in question was the result of a clerical error and the current rule involved should not be changed. However, the erratum was filed only after the controversy erupted. * The dozens, if not hundreds, of hams on the receiving end of the "call to action" who responded reflexively, would have done better to check the facts first; to read the filings and see what was actually being proposed, rather than taking the "call to action" at face value and filling up the internet with "flames" that often bore no resemblance to facts and sometimes bordered on the ridiculous (such as the assertion that the ARRL was trying to ban all CW operation on HF). * The ARRL stumbled on a variety of fronts, but primarily in behaving secretively in this matter, informing the membership of its actions only after the FISTS "call to action" resulted in hundreds of angry e-mails, internet postings and FCC comments. A statement from ARRL CEO Dave Sumner, K1ZZ, said that it became apparent that "some of the proposals contained in the (original) petition had been affected by the changes adopted" by the FCC in its HF phone band expansion and code test elimination rulings, and that the League Board, at its January meeting, "authorized General Counsel Chris Imlay, W3KD, to determine what changes to the petition had to be made to align it with the new FCC rules, as well as which aspects of the petition were not controversial and could reasonably be expected to be included in an FCC Notice of Proposed Rule Making." However, the Board minutes do not reflect this; apparently the decision was made while the Board met "as a Committee of the Whole to discuss regulatory matters" and those discussions are not reported in the minutes. In mid-February, League officials met with FCC staff to discuss their revised proposal, and properly filed a "Notice of Oral Ex Parte Presentation," which was incorporated into the public record on RM-11306, the petition for regulation by bandwidth. However, this was the only public notification and would have been noticed only by someone carefully tracking the comments on a petition on which comments have been closed for two years. The League did not inform its membership or the general amateur community of this meeting until March 23, more than a month after it happened.
Sumner points out in his statement that the
ARRL Board took more than three years to develop the original petition,
receiving input from an ad hoc committee and twice soliciting and
receiving input from the membership. However, its decision to reverse
course and virtually abandon the regulation by bandwidth petition was made
in an off-the-record session, without consulting or even notifying the
membership. It was done as quietly as possible, apparently in hopes that
no one would notice. The strategy obviously backfired. "Aligning" the Proposal With the New Rules The ARRL says its primary motivation was to bring the regulation-by-bandwidth proposal into line with recent changes in FCC amateur rules. But the League's original petition stated that "(t)he proposed changes are intended and are believed to be generally consistent with the Commission's proposal for 'refarming' the Novice Class subbands … which is now pending." The FCC's final decision on eliminating the Novice subbands and expanding the HF phone subbands was very close to what had been proposed. Very little change would have been required to align the original proposal with the new rules. The FCC also eliminated code testing for General and Extra Class, and granted all Technicians the HF CW privileges that previously had been given only to Novices and Techs-with-code. In that decision, the FCC was clear that it did not feel it was appropriate to give Technicians additional mode privileges, such as data or voice (except on portions of 10 meters), and the original ARRL petition might have permitted the use of data and digital voice by Technicians on 40 and 15 meters. But the only additional change needed to "align" the regulation by bandwidth proposal with that decision was accomplished with a single line in the revised proposal, stating that "on frequencies below 28.0 MHz, a station having a control operator holding a Novice Class or Technician Class operator license may only transmit a CW emission using the international Morse code." So, the premise of needing to make major changes in order to "align" the petition with the new rules is misleading at best, even though that was the justification presented to the FCC in the "Notice of Oral Ex Parte Presentation." So what was behind the 180-degree shift? It's hard to say, since the decision was made in secret, the revised proposal was submitted at a private meeting and it was not revealed to the membership until there was no other option. The only hint is Sumner's statement that "(i)t was also apparent that some aspects of the petition remained controversial." Well, yes, they were from the beginning, and still are. The petition calls for a major change in the way our bands are subdivided. That is controversial. It should now be left to the FCC, though, to sift through the many opinions already expressed to develop a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (or to choose not to), and to allow the democratic process to work its magic. The ARRL made the original proposal on the basis of the need for "facilitating research, development, experimentation and refinement of Amateur Radio digital communications techniques and advanced technologies." This need, which CQ supported in concept (although we disagreed on some of the details), still exists. The current rules are quickly becoming incompatible with new technologies that are not easily defined as CW, RTTY, phone or image. Retaining bandwidth-based regulation for 10 meters and VHF/UHF is meaningless, as is the statement that the Board of Directors continues to stand behind the concept of regulation by bandwidth, as the changes proposed by the League essentially abandon that concept where it is most needed, in the narrow lower-HF bands. In addition, there were several other changes that either went unnoticed in the original proposal or were slipped into the revision in the guise of "aligning" it with the new rules. For example, changing the definition of "bandwidth" from a precise technical one - "the width of a frequency band outside of which the mean power of the transmitted signal is attenuated at least 26 dB below the mean power of the transmitted signal within the band" - to the much more vague, "For a given class of emission, the width of the frequency band which is just sufficient to ensure the transmission of information at the rate and with the quality required under specified conditions." Or changing the definition of spurious emission to eliminate its reference to an overly broad signal. Or changing the maximum permitted bandwidth of an SSB voice signal (at frequencies above 28 MHz) from the originally proposed 3.5 kHz to 3.0 kHz, without explanation. The original petition discussed various standards in use for SSB voice bandwidth and stated that "ARRL recommends 3.5 kHz as a general rule…" but the revised petition offers no explanation for the change. Why are all of these changes necessary? There is no explanation offered. Some or all of the changes the League proposed may indeed be justified, and the ARRL may indeed be sincere in its explanations. However, the secretive method in which the changes were proposed, the fact that an "erratum" focusing on a major complaint about the revised proposal was not filed until it blew up in the League's face, and the less than straightforward reasoning given in the explanation for the revisions makes it very difficult for us to accept all of these explanations at face value.
A petition that took three years and several
rounds of member input to develop should not be abandoned secretively and
without notice to those same members. The ARRL is a membership
organization, and calls itself the National Association for Amateur Radio.
That being the case, nothing less than complete transparency in its
dealings with the FCC is acceptable. For What it's Worth… "For What it's Worth … " is a new series of online commentaries from CQ magazine. These commentaries generally will be on important topics unable to be covered in the monthly editorials, or essays by guest commentators. When written by the magazine's editor or publisher, they represent the editorial position of the magazine. If written by a guest commentator, they represent only the views of the writer. It is anticipated that these commentaries will be posted on the CQ magazine website and/or distributed via e-mail to those who have signed up to receive news and other information from CQ magazine. These commentaries may also appear from time to time in print, in CQ. |