FCC Filing for 219 MHz Rules Changes from ORI

Thank you to the many people that have helped with this effort. Open Research Institute (ORI) has filed the first of what might be several comments and proposed rules making efforts to the FCC about reforming amateur radio use of the 219 MHz band.

https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/search/search-filings/filing/10329271641887

The list of folks that have contributed and supported this effort to renovate 219 MHz for actual amateur radio use is quite long. This filing and any that follow are the result of over a year of work. Thank you especially to Mike McGinty, ARRL advisors, and Justin Overfelt. 

If you would like to help? 

1) Please use this comment to make your own similar request under this particular proceeding. This is a “what regulations do you want to delete?” type of call. As with many FCC calls for comment, it will be dominated by commercial interests. Anything from amateur radio will stand out. The deadline for comments is 11 April 2025. Speak simply and directly. We’d like to use this band without unnecessary and burdensome requirements. 

2) Please be ready to file a “reply” comment after the 11 April 2025 deadline. This is a chance for you to say “I agree with this and support this.”

We are not asking to change the fundamental nature of the band. Fixed digital messaging forwarding is super exciting these days because of SDRs, mesh networking, and all sorts of amazing protocol work available to us. We decided to simply ask for removal of the notification and permissions requirements. These requirements have resulted in zero use of this band for over two decades. 

The primary service back in the late 1990s when these rules came out was maritime (AMTS). Those licenses were never fully deployed and have now been leased out by railroads. This means, to us, that the permissions requirements now make no sense at all for secondary licensees. 

ORI is tired of this and is working to make this situation better. This is a great band with huge, innovative, digital promise. We deserve to have a seat at this table and that means the chair has to actually exist and the door to the room the table is located within has to actually be something we can open.