The latest FCC waiting game

In April I filed reply comments mostly to give the nudge to what Steve Stroh wrote. I have been down this utterly wasteful road before. Back in January of 2024 I wrote comments to the FNPRM on WT Docket 16-239 (the symbol rate).

That whole symbol rate thing started nearest I can tell around 2003 (RM-11306). And when that failed, it was reintroduced in 2013.

After it not going anywhere for a long time, the ARRL had congress woman Debbie Lesko step in. Finally in late 2023, the HF portion was enacted.

But this latest request in April for suggested changes to techical rules is not new. In 2017 the Technological Advisory Council (TAC) made a Technical Inquiry Into Reforming Technical Regulations. Bruce Perens, K6BP wrote an excellent look at things. But there were no changes to Part 97. Yet other services did manage to see changes.

So the question is what has the FCC done recently for ham radio? And how long are we going to wait this time?

Three things.

There ought to be a way to write off wasted time interacting with the government on your taxes, this might provide them an incentive to do their jobs. (Don't even get me going on Thomas Woodrow Wilson)

Writ of Mandamus. Now that we are paying fees, aren't we entitled to some level of service? (By the way it would be interesting to calculate how much money ham radio as a whole annually submits to the Failed Clown College)

And lastly, the more sane thing would be if the FCC would be more transparent and state in their inital request the expected time frame for decision-making. Heck if you're over 70-80 years old I see no reason to waste your time writing anything to them as you'll never see the fruits of your labors. You should be made aware of this up front.

Again in my opinion if they cannot modify rules in a timely manner they do not serve our interest well. Technology is advancing faster than we can get rules changed. We'd be better off having the whole administration of the amateur service moved to a third party. So much of it is already, like the testing, repeater coordination. All things they used to do.

44Net

In my last post I shed some light on how I feel there are good things being funded by the ARDC, but in the end its not really changing a whole lot.

It's origional inception was loaning address space to hams. And when you read their page:

"The goals are to of advance the state of the art of Amateur Radio networking, and to educate amateur radio operators in these techniques."

It's not clear what people are doing within the space. Is any of it aligning with the above stated goals? Or is the bulk of address space merely being used as an extension of the internet?

I'm a bit of an advoate for building the 44 intranet (read that again). The internal network. I have pointed out somethings a while back.

I'd also like to see some networking advancements. Are there any hams as cool at Brian Kantor these days, writing new protocols like he did way back when with NNTP? Could hams contribute to a movement to get the rest of the world to better adopt IPv6?

The problem as I see it, is a lack of direction. Identifiying things that ought to happen, (be researched written or built) and matching that with a bounty grant makes more sense to me than doling out the cash when ever club wants to have an ARES trailer.