BREAKING NEWS FROM THE AMATEUR RADIO NEWSLINE

NATIONAL FREQUENCY COORDINATORS COUNCIL (NFCC) VOTES TO RECOMMEND FCC
TREAT ALL REPEATERS AS REPEATERS


This arrived after our production deadline. We are issuing it as a
special bulletin because it will affect the introduction of digital
voice repeaters and restrict them to current repeater sub-bands as a
method of protecting all other spectrum users from encroachment
outside these subbands by digital voice repeating systems:



NFCC votes to recommend FCC treat all repeaters as repeaters

The membership of the National Frequency Coordinators' Council has voted to
ask the FCC to treat all repeaters as repeaters, regardless of mode or
transmission protocol. The following motion was adopted:

That the NFCC send a letter to the FCC that states that the NFCC believes
that any amateur station, other than a message forwarding system, that
automatically retransmits a signal sent by another amateur station on a
different frequency while it is being received, regardless of any delays in
processing that signal or its format or content, is a repeater station
within the meaning of paragraph 97.3(a)(39) of the rules of the Federal
Communications Commission, and should be treated as such.

Under the NFCC's proportional voting system, 93 votes were cast in favor of
the motion by 19 members, and 54 against by 11 members.

The letter will be sent to the FCC's Bill Cross today.