John,
The principle of regulation by bandwidth that was fostered by Winlink
through the ARRL was that any mode would be allowed in a particular
segment of bandwidths as long as the bandwidth was the same or similar.
No restriction on content or operating methods.This would have meant
that the messaging stations would have full access to all of the phone
bands with no restrictions. For example, Pactor-III which has about 100%
duty cycle (modulation), compared to 30% average for uncompressed phone,
could easily displace any phone QSO and the phone operator would not
even be able to identify the interfering station because he would not be
operating Pactor-III. The result would have been dominance by messaging
systems with no place left to have phone QSO's without the possiblity of
being interfered with by an automatic messaging station. Messaging
stations are run with ARQ so they fear competition of their own kind and
you can often see two automatic stations battling automatically for a
frequency. As a result they want to spread out over the band as much as
possible to avoid interference from each other instead of sharing
frequencies on a first-come-first-served basis like everyone else.
If you modify regulation by bandwidth to limit certain incompatible
modes or operating methods, then it is no longer "regulation by
bandwidth", but back to "regulation by mode" (perhaps also with some
regulation by operating method thrown in for protection of some
interests), but the FCC is happy with the regulation by mode we
currently have, and they have seen no good reason to change what works
for most communications already. Note that there is phone (wide) and CW
and PSK31 (narrow) only to deal with now and digital operators are in
the distinct minority, so there is little incentive to "upset the apple
cart" to accomodate a minority of new modes. They may, in time, but only
after careful consideration of all the arguments and proposals.
As a result of opposition from everyone else except the messaging
stations, the ARRL was forced to withdraw the petition and the FCC
continues with regulation by mode instead of merely by bandwidth. As it
stands, if spread spectrum were allowed without any limitation on
bandwidth or requirement for third party copying, since there is no
limitation on bandwidth on the HF bands, the band could be filled with
spread spectrum stations covering wide bandwidths and once there are
many spread spectrum stations, the fact that a single station will not
interfere very long becomes a huge multitude of frequency-hopped signals
that in the aggregate, that could cover many frequencies at once. What
we hope is that the FCC will someday allow spread spectrum as long as it
is limited in bandwidth to 3000 Hz and copiable by third parties for
frequency mediation and identification when necessary. To do this, it
will be necessary for the FCC to consider all arguments pro and con and
decide whether or not to allow a limited form of spread spectrum on HF
and VHF. The impact of a single spread spectrum station only cannot be
the only consideration, but instead the impact of a multitude of spread
spectrum stations, all transmitting at the same time on different
frequencies. This obviously complicates the decision enormously, so the
FCC needs to act carefully in order not to make a mistake.
BTW, I have been monitoring 14.101 for several hours and ROS just froze
in Windows 7 with an error message, "Run-time error 5. Invalid procedure
call or argument"
73 - Skip KH6TY
John B. Stephensen wrote:
The current restrictions on automatic stations can stay in place with
regulation by bandwidth so this shouln't be an impediment.
73,
John
KD6OZH
----- Original Message -----
*From:* KH6TY <mailto:kh...@comcast.net>
*To:* digitalradio@yahoogroups.com
<mailto:digitalradio@yahoogroups.com>
*Sent:* Sunday, February 21, 2010 22:30 UTC
*Subject:* Re: [digitalradio] A closer look at ROS]]
There are those who think that regulation by bandwidth would solve
everything, but there are also those who would love that chance to
take over the HF bands with automated messaging services so they
do not have to worry about crowding anymore. You can be thankful
for regulations that both protect, and also allow, with
limitations, and that cannot be changed without a sufficient
period of public comment from all users so that all sides can be
heard from. The FCC adheres to such a process.
