http://www.arrl.org/announce/regulatory/bandwidth/Bandwidth-Minute-64-Petition-FINAL.pdf
I printed all 25 pages of the petition so I can sit down comfortably and digest it all.
I don't think the FCC accepts comments to a petition until it has been assigned a RM- number. Also, not sure if they have a reply-comment period for a petition that has not officially become a NPRM. Maybe someone could clarify this.
No doubt some of the anti-AM crowd will call for getting rid of the 9 kHz exception for AM, and that's what bothers me most about this thing - AM would be permitted only by an exception containted in a footnote, which could be very easily deleted.
Also, there is no guarantee that the FCC's NPRM would even resemble the original petition. They could come out with something pretty much identical to Docket 20777, which would have eliminated AM altogether, back in the 70's.
Also, I'm not sure about the "occupied bandwidth" vs "necessary bandwidth" issue, as far as how bandwidth would be defined.
The last time I checked, Canada still had a maximum bandwidth limit of 6 kHz for AM, but I never have heard of a Canadian ham being cited for running too much bandwidth while running a normal AM signal. I don't know how picky the FCC would be about this. Of course, a strict 3.5 kHz limit would shut down a lot of slopbuckets as well.
Don, k4kyv
