via the ARRL: ARRL Defends 902-928 Amateur Radio Band

ARRL® The National Association for Amateur Radio® has filed comments [PDF] with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) urging that the 902 – 928 MHz amateur radio band be protected. ARRL joins hundreds of licensed radio amateurs who utilize the band in opposing a proposal from NextNav Inc., a licensee in the 900-MHz Location and Monitoring Service (LMS), to completely reconfigure the 902 – 928 MHz band and replace the LMS with high-powered 5G cellular and related location services.

Read more about NextNav’s proposal on ARRL News (8/15/2024)

ARRL’s comments, filed by our Washington, D.C. Counsel on behalf of ARRL members and radio amateurs, point out several problems with NextNav’s request.

“Contrary to NextNav’s assertions, the band is extremely crowded with millions of devices and transmitters in operation in multiple services, including the Amateur Service. Adoption of the proposal would result in either massive interference that would prevent proper operation or displacement to other bands. The difficulty is that there are no other bands known to be available, and in fact, some of the Amateur operations in this band are here because they were displaced when a portion of the 420 – 450 MHz band North of “Line A” was closed to the Amateur Service some years ago. Others were displaced from the same band when new Federal Government defense radars were initiated and continued Amateur secondary operations would have interfered with their operation.”

Pushing amateur radio out of heavily used spectrum is a risk to public service, ARRL argues in the comments.

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