You think people will comply with narrowband?

[Farmboy]

There are so many wide band radios out there being used. What is going to happen to the guys who don't even know they're out of compliance? The only reason I heard about it is because, out of the blue, I bumped into an old salesman at a store one day. I'm guessing the radios will still work, just like they always did, and people will go on using them unknowingly. It's kind of a major issue for many companies who have 10s of thousands of dollars tied up in radios and repeaters. Seems very unfair. (welcome to gov't regulation)

[AEC]

We all know government does not follow the rule of law, that's for the people to obey.
I am sure the fed and state operations will never be affected UNLESS they want to. We see this arrogance all the time, and this issue is no different.
The second claim to being on the lunatic fring here is: Grandfathering!
How can it make sense to grandfather 25K systems when the remainder of the nation will be forced down to 12.5K?
If making no sense now DOES make sense, grandfather ALL or NONE, plain and simple.

I can see several problems come up in the future, once this is in full swing.
Interference problems, especially with close-spaced repeaters, base stations operated by disparate companies/agencies.
Poorly tuned cans, isolators and improperly maintained radios of all types.

Someone WILL complain about a 25K operator causing problems to 12.5K stations somewhere. (think CB era channel misuse)
Narrowband 'splinter' channels alongside itinerant 25K channels....you KNOW no thought has been put into creating a sort of guard band between 12.5K and 25K systems in a specific geographical locale. Urban areas will probably suffer more than rural areas, given the fact that urban areas are far more crowded and have far more reflecctive/refractive surfaces to deal with, unlike rural reas, where interference occurs mainly from brute force signals to your neighbor 2 miles away, and only 20Kc away.

Far too many systems STILL don't use PL on BOTH transmit and receive, so CSQ machines will be affected.
We still have VHF links to UHF repeaters here in AZ. that are CSQ on the link!
And this is operated by DPS, not some 'dumb hams' as my ex boss used to gladly complain about!

Who's dumb here? CSQ on a public safety repeater? You have got to be joking....NOPE!

We all know the military uses far more spectrum than it needs, and transmits at far higher power levels than we can afford as well.

This narrowbanding effort is one more red herring to scare the people into compliance, and until we are ALL on the same sheet of music, don't force change until we all can sing the same tune.

Welcome to Obamaconomy folks.....Here's your change!

[WB6NVH]

That happened to some extent back in 1962 when the standard went from 15 KHz wideband to 5 KHz narrowband. Many taxi companies and small volunteer fire departments just kept using their old FMTRU-30D "coffin units" and FMTRU-5V "Dispatchers" until the radios finally fell apart or the service shop refused to work on them anymore. There were even some major police agencies which kept on using their wideband gear on secondary channels.

I have to wonder about the people still paying high prices for non-compliant radios on eBay. These people can't all be hams, and in a couple of years these radios are going to be basically worthless in a commercial sense. Things like regular Spectras, Sabers, first generation GE Orions, etc.

[Tom in D.C.]

FWIW, here is the informal FCC Q&A on the subject of conversion of current wideband radios to narrowband. This was lifted by me from another thread on this site, so do some looking and digging for even more confusing, scary information.

http://mccmag.com/onlyonline.cfm?OnlyOnlineID=147

Regards and good luck to all!

[escomm]

People will get with the program once the FCC starts issuing notices of apparent liability, citations and fines.

[Farmboy]

Seems I remember them trying to pass the narrowband legislation a few times in the past 10 years. I'm wondering if it will bet put off again.

I too have to wonder about the high prices of used radios on ebay. I'm wondering if I should start selling all mine on there while they still seem to have value. On the other hand, maybe this won't turn out to be a big deal, hard to say. Either way, it's a crock. I figured out today that in addition to the repeater, I have 23 mobiles in our farm equipment. I'm not real hot on the idea of replacing them all. Maybe now is the time to switch to VHF.

[tvsjr]

VHF has narrowbanding requirements too.

Don't bet on this date getting pushed back. There is no legislation to pass - it's done, and the cutover date is 2013. Adapt or die...

[RadioSouth]

Obama pushed back the DTV transition so guess it's possible. Don't know you guys feel about it but seeing some towns struggling to make a payroll certainly seems like something that could wait. Seems like something that would have no benefit
in rural areas and even in the urban areas so many users have gone to trunking many conventional frequencies have been made available. I'd rather see these vacated frequencies go into a bucket and made available to varying radio services.

[Will]

They do not even comply NOW, too many running wideband and high power on 12.5 kHz channels right now.

The FCC is even too stupid to know what they are looking at. One of our customers has a wideband data transmitter on their frequency 24/7 rendering there properly licensed system usless.

[tvsjr]

Obama pushed back the DTV transition so guess it's possible. Don't know you guys feel about it but seeing some towns struggling to make a payroll certainly seems like something that could wait. Seems like something that would have no benefit
in rural areas and even in the urban areas so many users have gone to trunking many conventional frequencies have been made available. I'd rather see these vacated frequencies go into a bucket and made available to varying radio services.

Yeah, right. Try getting a VHF public safety license within the "circle of influence" of Dallas/Fort Worth. Everyone kept their VHF channels "just in case". IMO, they could negate the need for narrowband by reclaiming these channels... if you haven't used them in 3 years and have no formal plan to use them, then they go back to the pool.

[Tom in D.C.]

As far as the "I didn't know about it" defense goes, I don't think that the FCC would allow it any more than the IRS would allow it. Assuming the new rules go into effect in 2013, if I were running a repeater system today with thirty-some radios I'd definitely be making plans to get my system into conformity by that time. You can buy used M1225 radios pretty cheap these days, and you can even buy similar new units from other manufacturers at very good pricing, heretical as that thought might be to many here.

[d119]

Obama pushed back the DTV transition so guess it's possible. Don't know you guys feel about it but seeing some towns struggling to make a payroll certainly seems like something that could wait. Seems like something that would have no benefit
in rural areas and even in the urban areas so many users have gone to trunking many conventional frequencies have been made available. I'd rather see these vacated frequencies go into a bucket and made available to varying radio services.

Yeah, right. Try getting a VHF public safety license within the "circle of influence" of Dallas/Fort Worth. Everyone kept their VHF channels "just in case". IMO, they could negate the need for narrowband by reclaiming these channels... if you haven't used them in 3 years and have no formal plan to use them, then they go back to the pool.

This is the same situation where I work. I know of *NO* agencies who gave up their old frequency pairs when they switched systems, went trunking, or changed bands. They kept their licenses "just in case". In such an RF saturated area as where I am, the FCC should absolutely mandate "use or vacate". But alas, the bureaucratic BS continues.

[RadioSouth]

Any other countries doing this ?

[MassFD]

Has everyone been living under a rock, Narrowband discussion started in the 90's and the date has been moved several times. In the tristate area the only way to get a UHF freq for the last 5 years has been a narrowband assignment.

At this point most of the new frequencys created by narrowbanding are already licensed and working very well.

[AEC]

Has everyone been living under a rock, Narrowband discussion started in the 90's and the date has been moved several times. In the tristate area the only way to get a UHF freq for the last 5 years has been a narrowband assignment.

At this point most of the new frequencys created by narrowbanding are already licensed and working very well.

We are quite aware of the issue, the problem actually stems from the FCC's drive to force licensees onto narrowband while grandfathering wideband
usage within the same band plan.

The whole process is moronic at best, and with wide and narrowband all on the same band, it makes no sense to attempt to force this upon folks without a good and valid reason, other than to force the purchase of new equipment from costly vendors.

Make the corporations money with gun-point like mandates so the 'little people' have less to work with.
Narrowbanding will change nothing, and yes, it's been an issue for decades.

As we all know, the crowded UHF spectrum will never thin out as there will always be someone ready to jump in and occupy a channel or three somewhere.
And going to 12.5K spacing will never 'free up' a single megahertz for new folks.

The military hogs bandwidth, and will never use what they took, and will surely never give any up if and whem it's needed as they will always call for a need for still more spectrum, even if they decide to push out someone.

The business world wanted to play on 2220, and they got it...taken away by big money and paid for politiciains pandering to the FCC on how great they will make it all pay back in spades.....Never occurred, never will.

BUT, the amateur community still lost out and will never see the return of the lower end of 220.

Narrowbanding issues are the same crap shoot, with the losers being small businesses, mom and pop operations and many more.

All forced into buying new, when the old works just fine, and still doesn't interfere with other users on the same band.

Remember, the FCC loves your money, as do all branches of government, and they will stop at nothing to take it from you, one way or another.

[ai4ui]

We are quite aware of the issue, the problem actually stems from the FCC's drive to force licensees onto narrowband while grandfathering wideband
usage within the same band plan.

Prime example. I was at a communications drill here in Florida this week. We operated a wideband VHF repeater during the drill used as a safety & command net. At the site there was an existing narrowband repeater that had an input that was 12.5 kHz away from our input. Needless to say, we could hear their mobiles on our repeater. When I reprogrammed the repeater for narrowband, the interference pretty much went away - just occasionally breaking squelch. We couldn't ask them to not use their repeater, we were their guests, and we could not logistically change the frequency on our repeater. So we did what we could and it helped a lot.

I can really see where having WB & NB operating in the same area would be a hugh problem.

[kf4sqb]

My take on the matter: the FCC is in the back pocket of equipment manufacturers. Its not like we haven't seen this trend before. Remember the Nextel fiasco (800 rebanding)? Tell me (with a straight face and no fingers crossed) that Motorola didn't call the shots (behind the scenes, of course) in that situation. Would anyone really be surprised if the same thing is going on this time, too? Rather than putting an ignorant "patch" like narrowbanding on the problem, the FCC should do their job and actually police the airwaves for a change. As has already been brought up, there are probably thousands of agencies that have transitioned to 800 trunking, but are holding on to their VHF & UHF allocations that they no longer use. If they'd make people like that either use the allocation or lose it (most would lose it, since they can't justify keeping it), they could reclaim quite a bit of bandwidth.

[RadioSouth]

From my perspective it just seems excessive and now isn't the time to be funding stuff that's really not needed. Out in the country this isn't needed whatsoever. In the cities, yes we ran out of UHF frequencies. BUT many of those users migrated to 800 freeing up many UHF freq's. Problem is the UHF frequencies were never re-assigned and those spectrum hogs are still holding them, why are they still renewing ? In my area 5 UHF sets (10 freq's) are still licensed to a service that the infrastructure was taken down over 10 years ago ! In the very big cities UHF-T frequencies were reallocated to ease congestion where there's still a lot more room to borrow from. Want to 12.5 new allocations, fine do it in newly aquired or reallocated bandwith. Leave what's in place intact. We don't need to fix something that's not broken just more efficient management of what we already have.

[N4DES]

We are quite aware of the issue, the problem actually stems from the FCC's drive to force licensees onto narrowband while grandfathering wideband usage within the same band plan.

The FCC has already advised that they will be doing an automatic cancellation of licenses that do not conform to the narrowbanding requirement, now whether the equipment gets modified is another question, at least those who used to have a license can't say that they weren't warned.

Like the FCC audit of a few years ago and automatic cancellation due to no response, we will have a lot of unlicensed users operating wide-band for many years to come.

On the topic of granfathering, I think the nationwide U and VHF EMS systems should be allowed to remain wideband. This project has become a major headache trying to coordinate and even worse than 800 rebanding which comes as no cost to user agencies.

Mark