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FCC License


Jeff Wexler

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Lack of enforcement not withstanding, the FCC considers operating wireless transmitters over 50mW without a license a violation of 47 CFR Part 74. We should all be licensed, and it's a nominal fee to be compliant with the law.

Don't worry, "being compliant with the law" varies from state to state, and there are so many thousands of pages of laws and ways of interpreting them... If someone with a badge wants to be a jerk and hassle you, they CAN and WILL find something to stick to you, forcing you to pay to defend yourself or possibly even bail yourself out THEN pay to defend yourself.

The less of a profile you maintain to the gub'mint, the less chance you have of being picked in this game of 'whack-a-mole' that is our enforcement process. I strongly believe that your freedoms in this country last only as long as you remain below their radar. Don't forget, enforcers of every stripe all have "performance guidelines" (quotas by another name) impressing upon them to go out and find another member of the citizenry to have "professional contact" with during each shift. I prefer to not be that member of the citizenry, it always ends up costing money and time for nothing.

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I would say it a little differently: "The less of a profile you maintain to the gub'mint, the less chance you have of" --having your livelihood taken into consideration when they make the next set of rules.

Cheers,

Larry Fisher

I agree with you there Mr. Fisher, however may I point out a tiny little problem of scale? The FCC is quite large and powerful. Somewhat equally so is your organization and the likes of Shure, AT, and the rest of the equipment manufacturers that build amazing things for we-the-small-and-individual.

When competing against organizations holding the money and lobbying power of AT&T / Comcast / Time Warner, I don't really have any illusions about my own wishes being heard. Licensed or not, I will never possess the profile to even be noticed beyond the local level, when these players are way up in the stratosphere.

If the pro-audio manufacturers all banded together again behind a set of collective wishes of their customers, I would happily sign on a petition to add the miniscule amount of weight my name could bring - One worker ant among tens of thousands, and we might annoy the leviathan enough to at least be noticed. But individually? The FCC wouldn't even notice my livelihood as they were squishing it under their rulebook.

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I agree with you there Mr. Fisher, however may I point out a tiny little problem of scale? The FCC is quite large and powerful. Somewhat equally so is your organization and the likes of Shure, AT, and the rest of the equipment manufacturers that build amazing things for we-the-small-and-individual.

When competing against organizations holding the money and lobbying power of AT&T / Comcast / Time Warner, I don't really have any illusions about my own wishes being heard. Licensed or not, I will never possess the profile to even be noticed beyond the local level, when these players are way up in the stratosphere.

If the pro-audio manufacturers all banded together again behind a set of collective wishes of their customers, I would happily sign on a petition to add the miniscule amount of weight my name could bring - One worker ant among tens of thousands, and we might annoy the leviathan enough to at least be noticed. But individually? The FCC wouldn't even notice my livelihood as they were squishing it under their rulebook.

We all understand the scale of the issue already, and the size of the forces in opposition. That is not an excuse for inaction on getting a license. If you want to be protected by the FCC etc you have to play by their rules, and their rules say that the needs of licensed entities are considered before those of unlicensed entities. Please stop complaining and do the things that you CAN do about this situation. One of those is getting licensed.

phil p

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  • 3 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Been almost 4 months. Still waiting. Application says 'Pending'. Honestly, the federal government needs to catch up to current technology big time.

Me too. I filed mine in March of this year, and have yet to receive anything.

They are doing you a favor if you don't get it until October, all FCC licenses are good for (up to) three years and expire at the same time and that's October 1, 2012.

Best regards,

Jim

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

FCC LP Authorization just came through. Took six months, but they made sure to make my expiration date June of 2015. I was worried when I got it today that it was going to expire in October as Jim mentioned, but alas I'm okay.

One of the reasons I went to the trouble of getting this license is to add my voice to our cause. And of course the battle for our spectrum usage isn't over by a long shot. On the back of my authorization paperwork it states clearly:

post-3713-0-17447900-1345825810.png

READ: "...broadcast TV channel assignments could be reorganized and some UHF TV spectrum (470-698 MHz) could be allocated for flexible use and assigned by competitive bidding."

We will see how it all plays out, but I really hope we don't wind up losing out.

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What that says is: "Thank you for becoming a second-fiddle licensed operator. You are now one step above the unlicensed operator... And you will have exactly the same rights they do, when / if we decide to allow ourselves to be bought off by giant bags of money from the major telcos... So if / when the massive operators change frequencies and start broadcasting on top of you... Tough squat. Thanks for getting a license! Your voice means a lot to us... Until someone pays us more than you did."

Yea, I'm being snarky about it, but really... How is "Your voice being heard" when you will have to once again be reactionary at your own cost when / if they decide to let the telcos buy them off again?

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I don't recall any language in my license that says I am "2nd fiddle" to anything, except previous license holders for fixed frequencies (TV stations and other entities that have bought spectrum), the military and emergency responders. We all knew our needs are in line behind those. If you got a license then thanks--the numbers of wireless mic users that get licenses does show up on the FCC radar and will bolster demands that our needs be considered in the changes to spectrum allocation that will inevitably happen. You can complain all you want, but it's better for all of us if you complain as a licensed user.

phil p

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I don't recall any language in my license that says I am "2nd fiddle" to anything, except previous license holders for fixed frequencies (TV stations and other entities that have bought spectrum), the military and emergency responders. We all knew our needs are in line behind those.

Not so much, you need to read the first sentence of what Alex posted. Here it is again:

Low Power Auxiliary stations in the UHF tv band are licensed on a secondary basis to present -and future- primary operations and cannot cause interference to primary operations, nor claim protection from interference from primary operations.

So you are licensed. You are still secondary to anyone that has paid --or will pay at some future date-- LOTS more to become a "primary" operator, and those primary operations may not be fixed frequency (think Secret Service or military), but should the FCC decide (and they just might) to continue to sell off the existing open spaces to AT&T etc, they can order the tv stations (fixed primary operations, natch) to change frequency at their own cost... And we as licensed secondary operators... Can either deal with the new reality, or pound sand.

That is what it says on the back of that license paperwork. Shortened to 4 words: thanks for the money.

Vasileios: no, the license is only good for a maximum of 3 years, and then you have to renew it. I thought they all expired at exactly the same time, but I guess that may have changed.

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Not so much, you need to read the first sentence of what Alex posted. Here it is again:

Low Power Auxiliary stations in the UHF tv band are licensed on a secondary basis to present -and future- primary operations and cannot cause interference to primary operations, nor claim protection from interference from primary operations.

So you are licensed. You are still secondary to anyone that has paid --or will pay at some future date-- LOTS more to become a "primary" operator, and those primary operations may not be fixed frequency (think Secret Service or military), but should the FCC decide (and they just might) to continue to sell off the existing open spaces to AT&T etc, they can order the tv stations (fixed primary operations, natch) to change frequency at their own cost... And we as licensed secondary operators... Can either deal with the new reality, or pound sand.

That is what it says on the back of that license paperwork. Shortened to 4 words: thanks for the money.

Vasileios: no, the license is only good for a maximum of 3 years, and then you have to renew it. I thought they all expired at exactly the same time, but I guess that may have changed.

We knew all this already. What we also knew is that without a license your voice is not heard at the FCC on this subject. Your license allows you legal use of the spectrum, in exactly the same fashion that your driver's license allows you use of roads. You do not "own" the road, are subject to detours and closures made by police or other government agencies, as well as permanent alterations of the route and even additional tolls. And your license has to be renewed. That is the nature of a license to use what is considered public property. If you don't like the sale of spectrum, then you should complain to your congressman. The era of free and unlicensed use of most parts of the usable RF spectrum is coming to a close, and only users the FCC sees as legit will have any sort of consideration in keeping some spectrum for use by the sort of wireless technology we presently have. That is worth the money and hassle to me, and I thank you for paying up even when you didn't want to. Our numbers, as evidenced by our licenses, matter in this situation, as does the demonstration that we are legit businesses and law-abiding citizens.

phil p

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Can I somehow use this as motivation for LA producers to send us call sheets before Midnight East Coast Time? Sometimes I have no idea where we are shooting the day before.

I have done this exact thing here in SF. I will admit that the whole "protected entity registration" thing hasn't seemed to have made any difference yet, either because no one has fired up "white space devices" on those freqs here (likely) or that it actually worked and the TVBD's really did call into the database and got off my freqs. It would be nice if that were true, I have no way of knowing though.... I'm waiting for the first "hassle" between TVBDs and wirelesses (like the one at a convention center described here about a year ago) in which the wirelesses were registered to make a judgement about whether that all is really working.

phil p

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My license is in progress, so I have not seen the page to register freqs yet, but will it somehow publish what is registered? I assume that's the point. Will it give away places people are filming by showing a lot of wireless registered at an otherwise "RF dark" location? I wonder if the more secretive reality shows, and narrative work, will not be happy to have their locations posted once they realize what we are doing.

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My license is in progress, so I have not seen the page to register freqs yet, but will it somehow publish what is registered? I assume that's the point. Will it give away places people are filming by showing a lot of wireless registered at an otherwise "RF dark" location? I wonder if the more secretive reality shows, and narrative work, will not be happy to have their locations posted once they realize what we are doing.

Here's the Spectrum Bridge site where users register their usage of wireless freqs, see what you think. Interesting questions.

https://whitespaces....gistration.aspx

phil p

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I wonder if the more secretive reality shows, and narrative work, will not be happy to have their locations posted once they realize what we are doing.

Ooh.. That could be a problem for the reality gigs I do too - On more than a couple of them, I haven't even HAD the address where we were filming, just an initial rally point (hotel) and then it was all production vehicles after that.

This will be interesting to see how it plays when we start asking for addresses to register the wireless. Somehow I don't think the producers will be too thrilled about giving away the secrets. Can anyone from the general public view the database with new assignments? If not (like it is only machine-readable) then that might serve to calm the producer types. The last thing any of us want is groupies showing up while we are trying to film "reality" in action.

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Ooh.. That could be a problem for the reality gigs I do too - On more than a couple of them, I haven't even HAD the address where we were filming, just an initial rally point (hotel) and then it was all production vehicles after that.

This will be interesting to see how it plays when we start asking for addresses to register the wireless. Somehow I don't think the producers will be too thrilled about giving away the secrets. Can anyone from the general public view the database with new assignments? If not (like it is only machine-readable) then that might serve to calm the producer types. The last thing any of us want is groupies showing up while we are trying to film "reality" in action.

This is a very good question and I'm going to look into it.

phil p

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