The FCC wants to hear from hams about the ARRL’s
recent proposal to shrink the 75-meter phone band by 50 kHz in order to make
more space for RTTY (radioteletype) and other data modes. 
Under the ARRL plan,
the boundary between the 80-meter CW/RTTY/data band and the 75-meter phone band
would shift from its current 3600 kHz up to 3650. The League claims that the
FCC took away too much from the CW/RTTY band 10 years ago when it expanded the
phone band from its old starting point of 3750 kHz down to 3600. The change,
according to the ARRL’s petition, resulted in a “shortfall in available
RTTY/data spectrum,” which this proposal is trying to address. In addition, the
ARRL petition would make 3600-3650 available to all hams with General Class or
higher licenses for RTTY and data modes, and to Novices and Technicians for CW.
It would also shift the subband for automatically controlled digital stations
from its current 3585-3600 kHz to 3600-3615 kHz.
The full petition may be found on the FCC
website’s Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) area under RM-11759. The
comment period closes on March 21. Opening the petition for public comment is a
preliminary step and the FCC has not yet issued – or decided whether to issue –
a Notice of Proposed Rule Making to implement any or all of the requested
changes.
