Friday, June 8, 2018

FCC: No Separation Rules for Digital Repeaters

The FCC has turned down a petition from a Michigan ham to require that digital repeaters be separated from analog repeaters, either geographically or by frequency, in order to prevent interference. The ARRL reported that Charles Adkins, K8CPA, filed the petition, claiming that digital repeaters pose "a major annoyance" to operators of analog repeaters. 

The FCC said no, citing a 2008 action in which it turned down a similar suggestion for designating separate spectrum for digital repeaters. The denial letter also pointed out that the rules already prohibit intentional interference and spell out procedures for resolving interference issues between repeaters. It said nothing had changed in the past 10 years to warrant revisiting the issue.