SB QST @ ARL $ARLB007
ARLB007 FCC Invites Comments on ARRL Petition to Allocate New 5 MHz Band

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ARRL Bulletin 7  ARLB007
> From ARRL Headquarters
Newington CT  February 21, 2017
To all radio amateurs

SB QST ARL ARLB007
ARLB007 FCC Invites Comments on ARRL Petition to Allocate New 5 MHz Band

The FCC has invited comments on the ARRL's January 12 Petition for Rule Making
to allocate a new, contiguous secondary band at 5 MHz to the Amateur Service.
The League also asked the Commission to keep four of the current five 60-meter
channels - one would be within the new band - as well as the current operating
rules, including the 100 W PEP effective radiated power (ERP) limit. The
federal government is the primary user of the 5 MHz spectrum. The FCC has
designated the League's Petition as RM-11785 and put it on public notice.
Comments are due Monday, March 20. ARRL plans to file comments in support of
its petition.

The proposed ARRL action would implement a portion of the Final Acts of World
Radiocommunication Conference 2015 (WRC-15) that provided for a secondary
international allocation of 5,351.5 to 5,366.5 kHz to the Amateur Service; that
band includes 5,358.5 KHz, one of the existing 5 MHz channels in the US. The
FCC has not yet acted to implement other portions of the WRC-15 Final Acts.

"Such implementation will allow radio amateurs engaged in emergency and
disaster relief communications, and especially those between the United States
and the Caribbean basin, to more reliably, more flexibly and more capably
conduct those communications [and preparedness exercises], before the next
hurricane season in the summer of 2017," ARRL said in its petition.

The League said that 14 years of Amateur Radio experience using the five
discrete 5-MHz channels have shown that hams can get along well with primary
users at 5 MHz, while complying with the regulations established for their use.
"Neither ARRL, nor, apparently, NTIA is aware of a single reported instance of
interference to a federal user by a radio amateur operating at 5 MHz to date,"
ARRL said in its petition. NTIA - the National Telecommunications and
Information Administration, which regulates federal spectrum - initially
proposed the five channels for Amateur Radio use. In recent years, Amateur
Radio has cooperated with federal users such as FEMA in conducting
communication interoperability exercises.

The League said in its petition that while the Amateur Radio community is
grateful to the FCC and NTIA for providing some access to the 5-MHz band, "the
five channels are, simply stated, completely inadequate to accommodate the
emergency preparedness needs of the Amateur Service in this HF frequency
range," ARRL said. Access even to the tiny 15-kHz wide band adopted at WRC-15
would "radically improve the current, very limited capacity of the Amateur
Service in the United States to address emergencies and disaster relief," ARRL
said.

The WRC-15 Final Acts stipulated a power limit of 15 W effective isotropic
radiated power (EIRP), which the League said "completely defeats the entire
premise for the allocation in the first place." ARRL said the FCC should permit
a power level of 100 W PEP ERP, assuming use of a 0 dBd gain antenna, in the
contiguous 60-meter band. "To impose the power limit adopted at WRC-15 for the
contiguous band would render the band unsuitable for emergency and public
service communications," the League said.

The ITU Radio Regulations permit assignments at variance with the International
Table of Allocations, provided a non-interference condition is attached.

Interested parties may comment on RM-11785 using the FCC's Electronic Comment
Filing System (ECFS) at, https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/ .

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