H.R. 607 "Broadband for First Responders Act of 2011" threatens part of 70cm band

I can live without 220 and 440 MHz band, here is Southern California, most of the 440 MHz band is used by repeaters, and the most of the repeaters here are private, so we can not use the frequency anyway.

 

Pretty selfish attitude.
I can live without everything down to 160m, but I enjoy amateur radio. It's a great hobby and I'd hate to see us lose a band that actually gets used, even if it by someone else. But, that's not going to happen. I think some of you need to read the bill again.

 

440-450 mhz is more than enough space for the amateur services to contract to from 420-450. In my opinion 99% of the time 99.9% of our current allocation is "quiet" in just about anywhere in the U.S. with maybe a few rare exceptions. 10 years is more than enough time to adjust to what is proposed and by then ham activity will arguably be 50% of what it is today. We do not need more than 10mhz here!

 

many of the repeaters in 440 MHz is either Not operational or very low activity, I am sure, many of those low activity repeaters can share same frequency.

 

Never hear ANYONE on 70cm in southern NH. There are a few active machines in MA... but seriously, folks, how many of us are active on 70cm 90% of our ham time? I bet none.

Not that I support the band being reallocated, but USE IT OR LOSE IT.

Would be a great packet band at 9600bps to augment APRS for WX sat imagery and geotagged photos, etc. If hams get with the times and use the band for more data, then maybe it has a chance. Otherwise, for phone, I'll use 2m thanks.

SAT folks probably have the greatest case for 70cm, and to a much lesser extent, ATV. my 2c

 

Broadband for First Responders Act of 2011

I hope that you are not foolish enough to think that the 'servants' of the people in Washington would consider for a moment the amateur community and the thousands of manhours we contribute to the public good when it comes to them lining their pockets with the bribes and corruption of the private sectors deep pockets.

 

I feel the same way about modes that don't generate a lot of revenue in the hobby and are neglected in the ARRL's regulatory, political and publishing functions.

Curiously here, the ARRL's attorney, Chris Imlay, also represents the SBE that issued the "legilsative alert." You would think he would try to curry support from licensed radio hobbyists using AM on HF, for example, as a bridge to his clients at the Society of Broadcast Engineers, who include many AM station technical people.

 

You can be assured that the ham community in its present state is powerless to change this proposed legislation. Writing letters to Congress has been for years and is now a waste of time. What makes us so vulnerable and helpless in any dealings with the FCC and Congress is the incompetent and inept ARRL. It has been thirty years since any meaningful ham radio legislation has been passed by Congress. The League has not changed the way it conducts its legislative action in years despite what it says publicly. Efforts to present the ARRL President and Directors with a new and more effective approach to legislative action have consistently been rebuffed by President Craigie and CEO Sumner. Ask Craigie and Sumner if they have ever read my memo dated January 12,2009, entitled: The OPPORTUNITY...WE MAY MISS!!! DO YOU AGREE????? I'd be happy to post it on this site and then you tell me what you think? Good luck ham radio!

 

ham radio has good use and serve public benefit when radio communication was done in Morse Code, and require special skill to operate radio and use it.
now, any volunteer can operate those digital radio such as FCC is proposing. I think it is inefficient use of spectrum to allocate such large chunk of frequencies to just merely a hobby, other wise it can be used for effectively with modern digital radio.

 

The area that may well be trashed is where Ham Digital and Satellite experimentation goes on, where new remote radio control packages are tested and so on. It isn't the repeater are it is the experimental area.

KF7CG

 

Hey Guys, I hate to see this proposal take place. I myself own 2 uhf repeaters in the Triad North Carolina area. The proposal would eliminate the ability for us to link repeaters together on the 430 band. It would force us to move our links to the 900MHz band, which would virtually eliminate the distance factor. If you thought 440 was line of sight, you haven't seen nothing yet. I myself would rather lose 900MHZ or 1.2GHZ, because there is no demand for those frequencies. And only a few Companies making these radios. There is plenty of surplus gear out there for 430, but not 900MHz and 1.2GHz. If they want to use frequencies, use the ones that aren't assigned to anything. 220 to 222 was leased to UPS, and they haven't persued that market. They took half of the 220 band and didn't consider the Hams using the spectrum. Pretty much Killed the band when they did that. 73's to all and God Bless

 

http://www.arrl.org/hr-607 ​

 

The lower part of the band is used for ATV, the 430 segment is weak signal, satellites, and repeater linking and control. We share these frequencies with the military.

The part that galls me the most is that they are proposing to give the commercial interests our bands 'to compensate them' for the loss of 700 MHz - which they have never had in the first place! That's adding insult to injury in my book, and does, indeed, show how easily money can sway a congresscritter.

One of my own senators is a cosponsor of the Senate version of this bill, and she will be getting an earful from me!

 

Sir,

As one who has been involved in communications since the age of 14, and worked with communications during 21 years in the Army; as one who is today engaged in the profession of Electromagnetic Compatibility, I would hope you can find it within yourself to refrain from an over exuberant enthusiasm for this Bill. It offers no great hope of improving National Security, will burden tens of thousands of communities and businesses with an unconscionable expense, and will displace military radar systems that are insuring our immunity from a surprise attack by any rogue state or enemy who wishes us to suffer harm.

There are some 219,000-plus FCC licensed commercial, local government, and Safety and Law Enforcement users of the spectrum between 420 and 450 MHz listed in the FCC Universal Licensing System's database who would, if this spectrum is taken for a broadband service, have to replace existing communication systems that for the most part work as well as needed. A broadband system adopted by diktat adds, in addition to that financial catastrophe, a unique single-point-of failure network which no digital or analog system so far has been able to overcome; its computers and their interconnections. It suffers as well from a modulation scheme that, if it will not require much higher power transmitters, will require a ubiquitous network of new repeater stations not now in place. It combines all the faults of the still-struggling APCO 25 project with those of the Nextel rebanding fiasco.

Therefore, I ask you work to see it studied and amended to take a more reasoned approach with a more reasonable impact. An appeal to security must contain some likelihood it will if listened to actually result in better security. This won’t.

Regards,

Cortland Richmond
Ada

 

Courtland,

Just recently, the FCC blessed LTE (4G technology) as the Public Safety technology of the future. Broadband is coming to 450 MHz...

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscente...y_network.html

http://blog.connectedplanetonline.co...ic-safety-lte/

http://www.atis.org/lte/documents/Ch...0Migration.pdf

Kiss the 70 CM amateur spectrum goodbye... The current Administration has said it would give up NTIA (gov't/military) spectrum -- the primary allocation/user on or of this band, I believe. Big Business is planning on $BILLIONS$ in sales surrounding LTE systems, to include the implementation and IT management of said systems.

It's a done deal. Really.