BREAKING NEWS FROM AMATEUR RADIO NEWSLINE
FCC RULES THAT DIGITAL VOICE REPEATERS ARE REPEATERS
The FCC has ruled that the claim by some owners of digital repeaters and some
frequency coordinators that digital voice repeaters are not actually repeaters
due to the time delay inherent in digital to analog and analog to digital
conversions is erroneous.
In response to a request for a Declaratory Ruling on this issue from the
Northern California Packet Association the FCC says that when a receiver and
transmitter are tied together as a repeater it is a repeater.
The full text of the FCC response to Gary R. Mitchell, President of the
Northern California Packet Association is reprinted below.
ARNewsline will have more on this issue in our next newscast to be released on
Friday, March 27th.
ARNewsline
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Text of FCC Digital Voice Repeater Decision
Mr. Gary R. Mitchell
President, Northern California Packet Association
P.O. Box K
Sunnyvale, CA 94087
Re: Petition for Declaratory Ruling filed December 5, 2007
Dear Mr. Mitchell:
This is in response to the petition for declaratory ruling that you filed on
December 5, 2007, requesting that the Commission clarify the definition of a
repeater in the amateur service rules. A repeater in the amateur service is
defined as "[a]n amateur station that simultaneously retransmits the
transmission of another amateur station on a different channel or channels."
You seek clarification of whether the word "simultaneously" in the definition
refers to the signal information being retransmitted, or to the fact that the
receiver and transmitter must both be active at the same time while acting on
the same signal information.
Section 97.205(b) of the Commission's Rules specifies the bands on which
amateur repeater stations may operate. You state that some amateur radio
operators are operating on bands other than those set forth in Section
97.205(b) with systems that are essentially voice repeater stations, but that
digitize and retransmit the user's voice, on the theory that because there is a
small delay in retransmitting the signal of another amateur station, the signal
is not "simultaneously" retransmitted and, therefore, the system is not a
repeater.
Prior to 1994, a repeater was defined as "[a]n amateur station that
automatically retransmits the signals of other stations." The Commission
revised the definition in order to clarify that certain accommodations for
message forwarding systems do not apply to other operating activities such as
repeaters and auxiliary stations. The Commission proposed to define a repeater
as "[a]n amateur station that instantaneously retransmits the transmission of
another amateur station on a different channel or channels," but ultimately
replaced "instantaneously" with "simultaneously" because commenters noted that
there is always a small propagation delay through a repeater. As one commenter
explained, "The word `simultaneously' in this case means that the repeater is
receiving and transmitting concurrently, whereas each signal might be slightly
displaced in time between receive and transmit."
To be able to repeat another station's transmission, a repeater must be able to
receive a transmission from another station and retransmit it. Because the
word "simultaneously" in the definition is used to modify "retransmit," we
believe it refers to a repeater station's transmitter being active when
retransmitting the signal received by the repeater station's receiver from
another amateur station. We conclude, therefore, that "simultaneously" as used
in the definition of a repeater refers to the receiver and transmitter both
being active at the same time.
Accordingly, IT IS ORDERED that, pursuant to Section 4(i) of the Communications
Act of 1934, as amended, 47 U.S.C. § 154(i), and Section 1.2 of the
Commission's Rules, 47 C.F.R. § 1.2, the Petition for Declaratory Ruling filed
on December 5, 2007 by Gary R. Mitchell IS GRANTED to the extent indicated
above.
This action is taken under delegated authority pursuant to Sections
0.131 and 0.331 of the Commission's Rules, 47 C.F.R. §§ 0.131 and 0.331.
FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION
Scot Stone
Deputy Chief, Mobility Division
Wireless Telecommunications Bureau
James
KB7TBT
www.kb7tbt.com
