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Prepared Witness Testimony The House Committee on Energy and Commerce
The Spectrum Needs of Our Nation's First Responders.
Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet
Mr. Jim Haynie
The American Radio Relay League, Incorporated, the national association of Amateur Radio Operators (ARRL), is pleased to offer the following testimony of its President, Jim Haynie of Dallas, Texas, regarding H.R. 713, the "Amateur Radio Spectrum Protection Act," sponsored by Rep. Michael Bilirakis, (R-FL) and the spectrum needs of the Amateur Radio Service, one of our nation's true "first responders". Amateur Radio, known informally as "ham" radio, should require little introduction to this Subcommittee. A non-commercial, public service avocation, Amateur Radio is a voluntary communication service famous for providing reliable, emergency and disaster relief communications at no cost to States, municipalities, disaster relief agencies, and the Federal Government. Radio amateurs respond immediately, and without a call to duty, following any type of emergency or disaster with communications facilities and systems, manned by volunteer, trained communicators. They assist in restoring public safety communications facilities; they provide "first responder" communications until public safety facilities are restored to operation; they provide interoperability between and among public safety and other entities (interoperability that typically does not exist on an interagency basis); and they provide efficient communications for disaster relief agencies, such as the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army, for the duration of disaster recovery efforts. Amateurs are best known for their immediate responses to hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, snow and ice storms, floods and other natural disasters. They are immediately available during and in the aftermath of such events, and commence their "first response" communications in support of public safety and disaster relief agencies and state emergency response agencies without any advance requests. Amateur Radio is also a service which promotes technical self-training. Many, perhaps most, telecommunications professionals derived their interest, and most of their basic skills, from their avocational accomplishments in Amateur Radio. Many developments in modern telecommunications, including low-Earth-orbit microsatellite technology, and many refinements and adaptations of new technologies, were and are the direct result of Amateur Radio experimentation and inventiveness. Worldwide, nationwide, statewide and local communications networks of Amateur Radio stations are in operation twenty-four hours per day, every day of every year. Since the Amateur Service is decentralized and ubiquitous, not dependent on fixed infrastructure, the ability of radio amateurs to provide reliable communications instantly over any path cannot be defeated by any disaster, act of terrorism, or by any other means whatsoever. The volunteer services provided by radio amateurs could not be duplicated by governmental entities at the Federal, state or local level at any cost. However, these services are provided at no cost. The Federal Communications Commission has at times described the Amateur Service as a "model of volunteerism" and a "priceless public benefit". Congress has repeatedly stated similar sentiments. In Public Law 103-408 in 1994, Congress found and declared that Amateurs are to be "commended for their contributions to technical progress in electronics, and for their emergency radio communications in times of disaster;" that the Federal Communications Commission is "urged to continue and enhance the development of the Amateur Radio Service as a public benefit by enacting rules and regulations which encourage the use of new technologies" in the Amateur Service; and by making reasonable accommodation for the effective operation of Amateur Radio from residences, private vehicles and public areas; and that regulation at all levels of government should "facilitate and encourage amateur radio operation as a public benefit." Earlier, in 1988, in Public Law 100-594, a sense of Congress resolution, at Section 10 thereof, Congress held that it "strongly encourages and supports the Amateur Radio Service and its emergency communications efforts;" and that "Government agencies shall take into account the valuable contributions made by Amateur Radio operators when considering actions affecting the Amateur Radio Service." In the Communications Amendments Act of 1982, Public Law 97-259, Congress, in praising the accomplishments of the Amateur Service, held that: "the Amateur Radio Service is as old as radio itself. Every single one of the early radio pioneers, experimenters, and inventors was an amateur; commercial, military and government radio was unknown. The zeal and dedication to the service of mankind of those early pioneers has provided the spiritual foundation for amateur radio over the years. The contributions of amateur radio operators to our present day communication techniques, facilities, and emergency communications have been invaluable." There are more than 680,000 Amateur Radio licensees of the FCC, and the numbers are growing. Amateur Radio has not lost any relevance or interest due to the advance of the Internet or other new technologies. The number of technologically-inclined individuals is on the increase as the result of the technology boom, and Amateur Radio allows them to experiment and develop their skills in a useful, constructive and flexible medium. The use by radio amateurs of the radio spectrum in small segments of the medium, high, very high, and ultra high frequency bands, and on microwave frequencies, serves two fundamental purposes. First, it ensures that radio amateurs have spectrum to use at all times of the day and night to provide long distance and short distance communications, voice, data or video, as needed. As actual examples, a radio amateur in the United States might communicate with his or her counterparts in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, or Guam during and after hurricanes or typhoons to coordinate relief efforts and delivery of medical supplies when all other facilities are inoperable. He or she might need to provide video transmissions from helicopters in support of, and to coordinate, fire crews fighting the Colorado forest fires. Short distance voice transmissions between amateurs allowed relay of messages between NASA personnel and FBI agents in efforts to locate Space Shuttle Columbia wreckage in Texas. Amateur Radio was a critical communications medium to facilitate tornado relief in Oklahoma and other parts of the Midwest in just the past few weeks. Any transmission mode, over any distance, is possible via Amateur Radio. All bands are used by some groups of radio amateurs for different applications. High speed data communications are popular in the microwave bands, as are very narrow bandwidth voice transmissions to study propagation and to improve receiver and preamplifier technology. An excellent metaphor for the use by Radio Amateurs of its small spectrum segments is that of a public park. The park is available to all who choose to use it, and it is used for the benefit of the public. Radio Amateurs, following the events of September 11, 2001, have sought even greater roles in disaster relief, homeland security, and emergency communications generally. They participated at the Pentagon and in New York in recovery efforts immediately following 9/11 by providing communications for disaster relief agencies, and since that time, have entered into an affiliation with Citizen's Corps, a program for neighborhood alerting and security organized by the Department of Homeland Security. ARRL has long had a memorandum of understanding with FEMA, with the National Weather Service, with the National Communications System of the Department of Defense, and with other entities, but the Citizen's Corps participation stands to greatly expand the role of Amateur Radio at the community level. Radio Amateurs must pass examinations in order to become licensed by the FCC. These examinations are administered and prepared by private sector amateur radio groups known as Volunteer Examiner Coordinators (VECs). They prepare and administer the examinations in coordination with the FCC for various license classes. The privileges of each class of license are keyed to the level of sophistication of the examination material. This is, however, the beginning of the educational process, not the end. ARRL has a Certification and Continuing Education Program. The most comprehensive aspect of this is the emergency communications training program. At the end of 2002, the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) made a three-year Federal Homeland Security Grant to ARRL, as part of a program to boost homeland defense volunteer programs. It was used to develop and administer at no cost to radio amateurs, improved emergency communications training courses. As of the end of May, 2003, more than 2200 emergency communication volunteers have already entered the multi-level course. It includes basic message handling, equipment and use, the incident command structure, and operations and logistics. The course has 20 lesson units and takes 25 hours to complete over an 8-week period. There are intermediate and advanced courses as well. Since all of the examination preparation and administration, and in fact most licensing data entry is done by radio amateurs themselves, the FCC utilizes almost no resources administering the Amateur Radio Service. Almost no enforcement is required by FCC, since the Amateur Service is essentially self-regulating. The invisibility of the Service to the FCC has produced both good and bad results. Radio amateurs are proud of their contributions made at no cost to the United States. However, the FCC, during the past 15 years, has had diminished awareness of the Amateur Service, and tends not to consider the needs of the Service when making spectrum allocations decisions. In general, the FCC neglects the Amateur Radio Service when examining rules changes requested in order to decrease regulatory burdens and facilitate deployment of new Amateur technologies. The FCC has continually winnowed the amount of spectrum available to the Amateur Radio Service, more aggressively in recent years. To an extent, this is understandable due to the pressure on the spectrum for new consumer and other wireless technologies. It is also something that Amateurs have accommodated by use of flexible, frequency agile equipment that allows re-use of spectrum. The Amateur Service cooperatively and very successfully shares most of its allocations above 225 MHz with the Federal government, and as well with unlicensed consumer electronic devices. For the most part, those sharing arrangements work well, and Amateur Radio operators have adapted their operations to accommodate other services and unlicensed devices. Spectrum remaining available to the Amateur Service is used very efficiently and very effectively, by use of new technologies including narrowband data techniques, spread-spectrum, software-defined dynamic frequency selection, and high-speed, packetized data. Some FCC spectrum decisions, however, have been substantially harmful to the Amateur Service. The FCC periodically has reallocated certain bands to other services, terminating access by the Amateur Service to those bands. As well, it has made incompatible allocations decisions which, on a de facto basis, make continued Amateur Radio operation on those bands impossible. Illustrative examples include the band 220-222 MHz, which was reallocated in 1989 for use by the Land Mobile Service, ostensibly to initiate narrowband commercial land mobile operation. However, land mobile licensing in that band has only recently been finalized. More recently, the 420-430 MHz band was reallocated in Buffalo, Cleveland and Detroit to the Land Mobile Service. Very recently, the FCC allocated 449-450 MHz, a band heavily used throughout the United States for Amateur Radio Repeaters for voice communications in emergencies, for use by wind profiler radars. In 1982, the 1215-1240 MHz band was reallocated, and became unavailable for Amateur Radio operation. The Amateur Service was formerly allocated the entire band 2300-2450 MHz. Over time, the band 2310-2390 MHz was reallocated, first for aeronautical flight test telemetry, and later for both Satellite digital audio radio, and miscellaneous wireless services. Recently, the 2400-2450 MHz segment has been increasingly and intensively used for wireless computer networking and Wi-Fi systems, making it all but useless for Amateur and Amateur-Satellite operation. The 2305-2310 MHz segment was allocated to the miscellaneous wireless communications service. What remains reasonably available in that entire band is now 2300-2305 MHz and 2390-2400 MHz, both of which are under pressure for reallocation by other services for satellite or terrestrial commercial technologies. At 5 GHz, the Amateur Service has a secondary allocation at 5650-5925 MHz, a large band 275 Megahertz wide. Within the past ten years however, the FCC has allocated 75 MHz of that for Intelligent Transportation Systems on a licensed basis (5850-5925 MHz); 100 MHz of that for unlicensed National Information Infrastructure systems (5725-5825 MHz) and FCC has just recently proposed to allocate another 75 MHz (5650-5725 MHz) for new Wi-Fi and other wireless LAN systems. Thus, of the 275 MHz formerly occupied by the Amateur Service and, compatibly, on a primary basis by the military for radiolocation systems, there is now only 25 MHz, at 5825-5850 MHz, remaining substantially uncompromised. Amateurs are, as a practical matter, excluded now from the 5850-5925 MHz band, because the Intelligent Transportation Systems that are to be deployed in that band include systems such as smart road signs. Amateurs could never transmit their own communications in a band in which signals from a "smart" road sign might be used to warn vehicles at a railroad crossing, for example, of oncoming trains. The result of interference could be disastrous. Thus, Amateurs are, de facto, excluded from that band entirely. A year ago, the FCC allowed extremely high-powered unlicensed point-to-point fixed microwave facilities to operate at 24.05-24.25 GHz using antennas with unlimited gain. These high-powered facilities will undoubtedly preclude any Amateur operation in those bands within the main antenna lobes of those devices. ARRL and radio amateurs generally understand that spectrum allocations decisionmaking is increasingly difficult for the FCC. We know that it is a dynamic process, and do not wish to limit that process or prevent the FCC from making allocations decisions that benefit everyone, and bring new services to the market. However, in that process, the spectrum needs of the Amateur Service have been, and are increasingly, disregarded by the FCC. At the same time that the Amateur Service has grown and continues to grow substantially, the Amateur Radio band allocations have been reduced to the point that the Service is compromised. We cannot continue to suffer the loss or diminution of use of available spectrum and at the same time continue to provide the valuable communications services and fulfill the important Federal goals for the Service that have been the hallmark of Amateur Radio for the past century, and to the present. Amateurs cannot pay for the spectrum they use, at auctions. Conceptually, a market-based allocations process disaccommodates radio amateurs completely. Assuming the utility of a market-based allocations process for spectrum using the private property model, the Commission must still maintain the "public parks" of Amateur Radio spectrum. Neither does the "spectrum commons" approach to spectrum management sufficiently accommodate the Amateur Radio Service, since unlicensed devices, in the aggregate, preclude much Amateur Radio operation without much more prudent management by the Commission than has been demonstrated thus far. While Amateur Radio is able to make some residual use of the unlicensed "junk bands" at, for example, 902-928 MHz, 2400-2450 MHz, and elsewhere, the density of unlicensed operation in the bands used for Wi-Fi and wireless broadband services, and the resultant high-noise environment quickly becomes incompatible with narrowband and weak-signal Amateur Radio operation. The near-future spectrum challenges to the Amateur Service are substantial as well. For example, the FCC is eagerly anticipating the use of power line carrier (PLC) systems as a competitive broadband delivery mechanism referred to as "BPL", or "broadband via power lines". The frequencies used would generally be in the high-frequency part of the spectrum, including the crowded Amateur Radio frequency bands at 3.5-4.0 MHz, 7.0-7.3 MHz, 10.1-10.15 MHz, 14.0-14.35 MHz, 18.068-18.168 MHz; 21.0-21.45 MHz; 24.89-24.99 MHz and 28.0-29.7 MHz. These bands are the long-distance mainstay of the Amateur Radio Service; they are critical to Amateur long-distance communications; and they are extremely overcrowded at all times. Receivers used are very sensitive. PLCs use power lines as transmission systems, but they are also extremely good radiators at high frequencies. The potential interference to the Amateur Service from these systems is extremely high. Other Amateur bands are in jeopardy, as the result of proposals from Mobile Satellite Service entities and terrestrial services who wish to expand their commercial allocations. At any given time, most, if not all, Amateur bands are the subject of requests for either reallocation of those bands, or for incompatible service overlays. As stated above, the FCC should be able to quickly make dynamic allocations decisions to accommodate new technologies. As a matter of policy, when the FCC makes allocations for new technologies which adversely affect incumbent licensees, the newcomer is expected to make arrangements to reaccommodate displaced licensees in equivalent facilities. This was done, for example, in order to implement Personal Communications Service (PCS) at 2 GHz; in the 800 MHz auction proceedings; and most recently, in order to implement Mobile Satellite Service at 2 GHz in the bands formerly occupied by broadcast auxiliary and fixed microwave facilities. This is standard FCC policy for commercial services. Redevelopment of Spectrum to Encourage Innovation in Use of New Telecommunications Technologies, 7 FCC Rcd. 6886 (1992); Mobile Satellite Service at 2 GHz, 12 FCC Rcd. 7388, 7396-7404 (1997); Redesignation of the 17.7-19.7 GHz Frequency Band, 15 FCC Rcd. 13,430 (2000). In the 17 GHz proceeding, the FCC affirmed its policy of making arrangements for reaccommodating those incumbents involuntarily displaced by new technologies in comparable facilities. This policy has been applied consistently with commercial services, and has been upheld on appeal each time. Association of Public Safety Communications Officials International, Inc. v. FCC, 76 F. 3d 395, 397, 400 (D.C. Cir. 1996); Small Business in Telecommunications, Inc. v. FCC, 251 F.3d 1015, 1017, 1026 (D.C. Cir. 2001); Teledesic, LLC. v. FCC, ___ F.3d _____ (D.C. Cir. No. 00-1466, decided December 28, 2001. These cases all affirm the FCC's policy that "existing operations should not be disrupted during transition to emerging technologies." Inexplicably, (or perhaps merely reflective of the fact that the Amateur Service is given insufficient consideration in FCC allocations decision-making), this policy, consistently applied where commercial radio services are displaced in favor of new technologies, is not applied where the Amateur Service is displaced, de jure or de facto, from an Amateur allocation. Unlike commercial displacement, where incumbents are reimbursed for the often very substantial costs of displacement and relocation to other comparable bands, the Amateur Service seeks no expense reimbursement. Radio Amateurs would be more than satisfied with just a place to go in order to continue their operations. That is exactly the purpose of H.R. 713, which does no more than that. It would, after the effective date of the legislation, define as federal policy an obligation on the FCC to (1) make no reallocation of primary allocations of bands of frequencies of the amateur radio and amateur satellite services; (2) not diminish the secondary allocations of bands of frequencies to the amateur radio or amateur satellite service; and (3) make no additional allocations within such bands of frequencies that would substantially reduce the utility thereof to the amateur radio or amateur satellite service; unless the Commission, at the same time, provides equivalent replacement spectrum to amateur radio and amateur satellite service. This provides no significant burden on the FCC. Nor is the FCC's flexibility in making allocations decisions limited to any significant degree. If the FCC does decide that an Amateur band is needed for a new service, it can immediately make the reallocations it wishes through normal rulemaking. It is merely obligated not to disaccommodate existing Amateur operations, and must provide what it determines in its discretion to be equivalent replacement spectrum elsewhere. The FCC would determine what constitutes "equivalent" replacement spectrum. Nor would Amateur Radio displace other incumbents. The Amateur Service can cooperatively share with most government and non-government incumbent users, and the burden of finding equivalent replacement spectrum is negligible as the result. The relief provided for the Amateur Service does not constitute any sort of special accommodation or treatment. It is merely extending existing spectrum policy to a service that should have been subject to the policy all along, but has not been. The Amateur Service has been the victim of consistent and substantial reductions in spectrum allocations. It requires the same protection afforded incumbent licensees in other services against further net reductions in spectrum. H.R. 713 provides that protection and it does so in such a manner as to provide FCC with all the flexibility it requires to make allocations decisions quickly and efficiently, and to provide for the rapid deployment of new technologies. The Amateur Radio Service is a "first responder" in the service of the United States, and with the assistance of this Subcommittee, will be able to serve in even greater volunteer roles, efficiently, for decades to come. Thank you for the opportunity to serve the United States and its citizens.
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