Updated FCC rule 95.1749 now includes “or other networks” Jan 2024

[73blazer]

And for the love of God, what's with the changing color lights on that display in the background of that meeting?!?!?!?! THAT, should be against the rules and warrant a letter of intent to cease and desist.

[DominoDog]

From what I can gather as a layperson, the rule needs clarification. People want/need to link their repeaters. That is a normal, expected use of repeaters. "Hey lets get together and talk over a broader area." That is a clear cut normal use of radio and falls within the expected use of GMRS. The rule shown very strongly leans towards "We don't want you putting autopatch on GMRS" more than "no you can't link repeaters"

[WRWE456]

On 2/17/2024 at 6:14 PM, 73blazer said:

And for the love of God, what's with the changing color lights on that display in the background of that meeting?!?!?!?! THAT, should be against the rules and warrant a letter of intent to cease and desist.

I think the meeting was at a Chinese restaurant. Look at the decor.

[RayP]

5 hours ago, DominoDog said:

From what I can gather as a layperson, the rule needs clarification. People want/need to link their repeaters. That is a normal, expected use of repeaters. "Hey lets get together and talk over a broader area." That is a clear cut normal use of radio and falls within the expected use of GMRS. The rule shown very strongly leans towards "We don't want you putting autopatch on GMRS" more than "no you can't link repeaters"

Sorry, but I must disagree.  Given the original intent of Class A Citizens Band/GMRS radio, of facilitating reliable local area communications between family and friends, linking is neither normal nor expected in this radio service.  In areas with cellular dead spots, or where people may wish to have backup comms for the possibility of a cellular outage, a well-engineered and fortuitously located stand-alone repeater can be a real blessing to the community, county, or larger area that it provides coverage to.  A cellular outage lasting a few hours could create a minor panic if a family member were not heard from in some time when they normally call or "check in" by a given time each day.  Likewise, emergencies such as severe weather, missing persons where a community fields volunteers to search an area, etc, could be well served by such a repeater. Linking to other repeaters outside of your area, especially across the state or across the nation provides no practical or necessary comms for your local area.  Instead, more often than not, they jam up one or more of the only eight repeater/50W simplex channels with inane and pointless chatter from other areas which have little or no bearing or interest to your local area.  Frequently, chatter on only one or maybe two of the linked repeaters, ties up multiple repeaters and frequency pairs unnecessarily, hampering efforts to use the remaining repeaters in their local area, or just someone wanting to use 50W simplex to communicate locally, only to be washed out by the linked repeaters.  The only real purpose I have seen in linking to distant repeaters and networks is to give the repeater owner doing the linking a level of Freudian "compensation", as they imagine the masses gathering to admire how far theirs can reach.  In reality, most who are not newbies are not impressed.

The technology used in linking is the same technology that allows most cell phones to make long distance calls.  If you really get your jollies talking long distance over a commonplace network, call a friend or relative in another state.  If you have no friends or relatives in another state, call a motel desk clerk elsewhere and ask them questions about their rates.  You have just achieved the same exact thing as you do talking to or listening to a bunch of ratchetjaws many states away on a GMRS linked system, but without jamming scarce spectrum.  If you really want to do VOIP DX, talk with the nice man or woman in India who calls to help you get a better rate on your credit card, next time they call.  YEEEE HAW!

IF that still leaves you dissatisfied, do the minimal studying required to get your Technician Class ham license and put up or utilize one of the many VHF/UHF networks there.  While the linking there is annoying too, they at least have a lot more pairs (than our GMRS eight) to do these networks on.

 

[quarterwave]

Not to play Bill Clinton's lawyer here, I don't have a dog in this but...

What is the definition of "network". A telco's phone and DSL system could be called a network. But, what is a cable system, or fiber system, is that considered a "network". I guess being from telecom, I consider a system with multiple destinations or addresses a network, but something like a fiber, or  even a a VPN over the internet is more like a point to point because it is only accessible by the party (or device) on either end (dedicated). Same with a T1. 

My thought after reading this stuff for years was that the rules were to keep radio audio off of PSTN lines. Fiber and cable are not that.

Just a thought. 

[Sshannon]

20 minutes ago, quarterwave said:

Not to play Bill Clinton's lawyer here, I don't have a dog in this but...

What is the definition of "network". A telco's phone and DSL system could be called a network. But, what is a cable system, or fiber system, is that considered a "network". I guess being from telecom, I consider a system with multiple destinations or addresses a network, but something like a fiber, or  even a a VPN over the internet is more like a point to point because it is only accessible by the party (or device) on either end (dedicated). Same with a T1. 

My thought after reading this stuff for years was that the rules were to keep radio audio off of PSTN lines. Fiber and cable are not that.

Just a thought. 

Network connection. Connection of a Personal Radio Services station to the public switched network, so that operators of other stations in that service are able to make (and optionally to receive) telephone calls through the connected station.

[quarterwave]

That was always my understanding as well, as far as radio was concerned. 

[WRKC935]

On 2/19/2024 at 11:33 AM, RayP said:

Sorry, but I must disagree.  Given the original intent of Class A Citizens Band/GMRS radio, of facilitating reliable local area communications between family and friends, linking is neither normal nor expected in this radio service.  In areas with cellular dead spots, or where people may wish to have backup comms for the possibility of a cellular outage, a well-engineered and fortuitously located stand-alone repeater can be a real blessing to the community, county, or larger area that it provides coverage to.  A cellular outage lasting a few hours could create a minor panic if a family member were not heard from in some time when they normally call or "check in" by a given time each day.  Likewise, emergencies such as severe weather, missing persons where a community fields volunteers to search an area, etc, could be well served by such a repeater. Linking to other repeaters outside of your area, especially across the state or across the nation provides no practical or necessary comms for your local area.  Instead, more often than not, they jam up one or more of the only eight repeater/50W simplex channels with inane and pointless chatter from other areas which have little or no bearing or interest to your local area.  Frequently, chatter on only one or maybe two of the linked repeaters, ties up multiple repeaters and frequency pairs unnecessarily, hampering efforts to use the remaining repeaters in their local area, or just someone wanting to use 50W simplex to communicate locally, only to be washed out by the linked repeaters.  The only real purpose I have seen in linking to distant repeaters and networks is to give the repeater owner doing the linking a level of Freudian "compensation", as they imagine the masses gathering to admire how far theirs can reach.  In reality, most who are not newbies are not impressed.

The technology used in linking is the same technology that allows most cell phones to make long distance calls.  If you really get your jollies talking long distance over a commonplace network, call a friend or relative in another state.  If you have no friends or relatives in another state, call a motel desk clerk elsewhere and ask them questions about their rates.  You have just achieved the same exact thing as you do talking to or listening to a bunch of ratchetjaws many states away on a GMRS linked system, but without jamming scarce spectrum.  If you really want to do VOIP DX, talk with the nice man or woman in India who calls to help you get a better rate on your credit card, next time they call.  YEEEE HAW!

IF that still leaves you dissatisfied, do the minimal studying required to get your Technician Class ham license and put up or utilize one of the many VHF/UHF networks there.  While the linking there is annoying too, they at least have a lot more pairs (than our GMRS eight) to do these networks on.

 

OK, but lets look at this from the other side of the coin for a minute. 

First is what's required for a linked repeater.  Yes, there is a linking device and some sort of audio interface.  Then there is the medium that is creating the link it self.  This is typically going to be the Internet, but P2P Microwave technology can be used for a closed system with some semblance of redundancy that will deal a failure of the connected Internet.  But you are NOT going to link a system the size of the MidWest group totally on Microwave hops.  The towers are too far away from one another and the Maximum link distances are much shorter than the coverage area of a 2.4 or 5.8 Ghz hop with even the best dishes available.  So to have minimum overlap to conserve frequencies as much as possible, there would need to be intermediary's in those links that didn't have a linked repeater on the tower, only a set of Microwave links to extend the distance enough so there wasn't miles and miles of overlap of repeater coverage. 

But the most important part of the linked repeater system is going to be the repeater it self.  And that is going to be as stable and operable as the power supplied to it, regardless of the ability to link out to the system.  My repeater would fall off the system do to my microwave link failing, but it never went off the air all together.  It just stopped being linked when the link medium would fail.  Now, I provided a second repeater with similar coverage for local access.  I told folks that were local to use that repeater for local conversations and how to tell when their conversations were local via the sound of the courtesy tone on the linked repeaer.  But my point is that my repeater wasn't going to fail because the Internet went down.  So for Emergency communications, it was built out to be better than the public safety system that we have in this county.  And that's still the case. Since I support that ssytem I can tell you how it's powered.  Yes it has generators that are propane with thousand gallon tanks, but the UPS / battery system is only good for about 30 minutes.  So when a tank goes empty, they have 30 minutes to get a PROPANE truck on site to fuel it.  And the links at the sites are powered off that same system.  My battery plant is gonna run my site for 24 hours as it stands right now.  The diesel generator has a 100 gallon tank that I can fill with diesel fuel from any source that has diesel.  The county has equipment there that they have committed to fuel the generator per the tower lease during a major outage (the system there is the backup to the other propane fueled system).  They have a fuel truck and a 20K gallon tank of fuel to feed that delivery truck by.  And they have 24 hours from the time it runs dry until the battery plant goes flat.  So if you are following all this, MY repeaters are backed up better than the statewide public safety communications system.  And if they can't feed it, I have 24 hours to go find fuel (diesel) get it to the site and in the tank before I go off the air.  And I can extend that by turning off other equipment and only running the public safety gear and the GMRS repeaters.  So reliance on my gear is gonna be assured.  Even a full failure of the repeater is only a minor issue as I have cold spares sitting there to be cabled in place and spun up.   And before you ask about the tower failing, anything that will bring the tower down will destroy the building first.  So again, My repeater isn't going to fail.  There are a number of the repeaters on the MidWest system that are solar.  They too will continue to operate without utility power or the Internet. 

Now linking repeaters during a major disaster can be sort of useless, especially if those links cross great distances that are not easily to travel.  If I am having a serious issue in Ohio, people in Wisconsin are not going to either care all that much or be able to provide much in the way of assistance in a timely manner.  Which is the argument I have had about the whole Ham Radio HF communications thing.  We just don't need it.  Local comm's inside and directly outside of the effected zone, sure.  Three states away, not hardly.  But that seems to persist in the minds of the hams for whatever reason.  

So why link at all?  First thing I would say is it provides a way to draw people to GMRS to begin with.  Getting people involved is the first step.  Repeaters with traffic on them will draw more people in than repeaters that are silent.  That goes for Ham and GMRS.  If you link a bunch of them together, a short conversation will turn into a large round table discussion from people in multiple locations.  This breeds extended discussion and radio friendships that frankly bring people together that wouldn't communicate otherwise.  I have met people on the radio that I have now also met in person that are literally hundreds of miles away from me.  Had it not been for linked radio, I would have never met these people.  So there is that as well.  The other thing it does, since it's generating traffic, is it gets locals to recognize each other and builds on the local community of GMRS operators.  That breeds cooperation and brings people together of varying technical back grounds that can assist each other with technical issues, creates study partners and groups for other radio endeavors and license study for them to get ham licenses.  And once those people that are local to each other realize this, and that the repeater they are on will work with out the link when the Internet is down.  They can create groups, look in on each other, and support each other in the event of a disaster.  So while linked repeater in a disaster aren't really a handy thing, unlinked repeaters are.

So, since you brought up the discussion of Long Distance calling.  I am gonna slap you with a history lesson so you know where the moratorium on linking came from to begin with.  If you look back to Class A Citizens radio Service from the 60's and the infancy of GMRS which started in the 70's, you might remember that the telephone company AT&T was the ONLY long distance carrier at that time.  And most any telephone call outside of your local exchange was considered long distance.  Pay phones were also a thing.  So AT&T, concerned with their long distance fee's being circumvented by people linking repeaters lobbied the FCC to disallow linking via the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network).  And the FCC obliged them by codifying that in the regulations.  It was done for that reason and that reason alone.  Public safety radio service was mostly done at that time across dry pairs of phone wires and it was a know to work solution.  But public safety wasn't going to be circumventing a long distance bill by doing so.  That's where it originally came from.  The ramblings of the guy in that video proved only one thing, he doesn't know his history.

So how do we move forward?  That's the real question.  The FCC. like any other governmental regulatory body moves very slow if at all on changing anything.  But enforcement efforts on current regulations will change with the federal funding of the body.  If their funds get cut, their enforcement will increase to increase their intake of money.  And the fed's are certainly not the only governmental entities that will increase their enforcement when faced with a financial shortfall.  Every little town and burg when faced with money problems will first and foremost increase enforcement of traffic violations to generate revenue. 

So past that, what COULD be done.  First thing is the FCC doing two things. First is allowing linking by any means.  Requiring that linked repeaters will maintain their operation without the linking medium being present.  Requiring that if you are putting up a linked repeater, that the area that repeater is covering is also covered by another non-linked repeater that has the same usage requirements that the linked repeater has.  Meaning if there is some club fee to access the linked repeater that at minimum that membership is also provided access to the other non-linked repeater.  Second thing is distance between linked repeaters or coverage overlaps.  You are going to want a bit of overlap, but there should NEVER be two repeaters that are linked to the same system that overlap coverage by more than 25%.  Back in the day when you had to use a slide rule and four pencils to calculate the coverage of a repeater, it was difficult to figure out the coverage of a repeater.  Now, it's on line.  You put in the height, power, antenna gain and line loss and it will spit out a map that is reasonably accurate.  No rocket science involved. 

Another possibility is setting aside certain repeaters as the only ones that can be used for linking.  This will address the coverage issue in a different way.  If you only have two or 3 pairs that can possibly be used, then overlapping coverage gets eliminated due to technical issues created by not having your pick of pairs.  If you want to link multiple repeaters, spend the money and simulcast on a SINGLE pair from multiple sites.  Yes, it's possible, yes it's silly expensive, but it's completely doable.  I am not gonna go into what's involved, but Internet links are not gonna be any part of it for the simulcast portion.  And those systems, because of the requirements, will be redundant and high availability.  But, here again the FCC needs to change things. 

Lastly is the FCC once it changes things is it gets back to enforcement of the changes.  Get letters out to people that are violating and get them to cease and desist their inability to follow the rules.  This stuff can be fixed.  We don't need more pairs, we don't need digital radio technology to address these things, we just need a bit of change and a bit of enforcement help to get things going.  And ultimately, GMRS people that find that radio is fun, by default will go get their ham licenses, which generates MORE income though licensing fee's for the FCC bank accounts. 

 

[Lscott]

2 hours ago, WRKC935 said:

Back in the day when you had to use a slide rule and four pencils to calculate the coverage

That was a long time ago. The younger electrical engineers walk into my office and sometimes ask what that funny looking ruler thingy is hanging on the wall above my desk.  And they don’t know what a vacuum tube is either. Sad. 
 

https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/342-slide-rulejpg/?context=new

 

[WRXB215]

@Lscott Here is my dad's old slide rule. I used to know how to use it. 

https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/419-slide_rulejpg/?context=new

[Lscott]

1 minute ago, WRXB215 said:

@Lscott Here is my dad's old slide rule. I used to know how to use it. 

https://forums.mygmrs.com/gallery/image/419-slide_rulejpg/?context=new

Wow, that's in really great looking condition! People collect these and pay big bucks for them.

To keep the slide on the metal types from sticking you use a VERY tiny dab of Vaseline on the slide edges as a lube.

[Lscott]

Anyway, back to the threads main topic....

[tweiss3]

I use a pipe flow slide rule that I use quite often, its a handy tool.

 

Anyways, the more I re-read Part 95, the more I find missing definitions, and what seems to be the intention to prevent phone patches (which don't really exist anymore). The intent of the ruling is to keep Part 95 completely within Part 95, avoiding telecom rules, microwave linking rules, etc., which now the moving target is ISP/IP based connections for linking. The problem is the rules (which seem even outdated for 2017) don't actually convey the intent as a rule.

I still maintain that short distance linking via purely RF staying within GMRS frequencies is likely permitted. 

[WRXB215]

15 minutes ago, tweiss3 said:

phone patches (which don't really exist anymore)

I was surprised to find at least 13 ham repeaters in the Houston area with this.

[Lscott]

Just now, WRXB215 said:

I was surprised to find at least 13 ham repeaters in the Houston area with this.

Are all of them linked together on the same system?

[Sshannon]

53 minutes ago, tweiss3 said:

I use a pipe flow slide rule that I use quite often, its a handy tool.

 

Anyways, the more I re-read Part 95, the more I find missing definitions, and what seems to be the intention to prevent phone patches (which don't really exist anymore). The intent of the ruling is to keep Part 95 completely within Part 95, avoiding telecom rules, microwave linking rules, etc., which now the moving target is ISP/IP based connections for linking. The problem is the rules (which seem even outdated for 2017) don't actually convey the intent as a rule.

I still maintain that short distance linking via purely RF staying within GMRS frequencies is likely permitted. 

Our two meter repeater has a phone patch.

[WRQC527]

1 hour ago, Sshannon said:

Our two meter repeater has a phone patch.

Mine did too until recently. I still use a phone line to control my 1200Mhz repeater. I also still have my father-n-law's 1980s-vintage Yaesu FT-207R 2-meter HT that he used to call his mother through a phone patch from his plane when he flew into South Dakota so she would know to meet him at the airport. 

[WRUQ758]

I "migrated" to GMRS from Amateur Radio (30+ years) because there are nice PPL there and a lot of activity. Pretty much wherever I go 2 meters is dead and I mean DEAD! So if this rule was promulgated for GMRS why not have the same rule for Amateur Radio? No more IRLP, DMR MARC network etc. SAR net in FL would be exempt because it's microwave linked courtesy of DOT towers. I really enjoyed using GMRS Nationwide, Not A Rubicon and other great networks, now most have gone silent. I made a LOT of good friends I can no longer talk to. Why do people at the top ALWAYS have to ruin EVERYTHING? Pull the ham linking down and see how fast they start screaming though the ARRL lobby. 

[Sshannon]

9 minutes ago, WRUQ758 said:

I "migrated" to GMRS from Amateur Radio (30+ years) because there are nice PPL there and a lot of activity. Pretty much wherever I go 2 meters is dead and I mean DEAD! So if this rule was promulgated for GMRS why not have the same rule for Amateur Radio? No more IRLP, DMR MARC network etc. SAR net in FL would be exempt because it's microwave linked courtesy of DOT towers. I really enjoyed using GMRS Nationwide, Not A Rubicon and other great networks, now most have gone silent. I made a LOT of good friends I can no longer talk to. Why do people at the top ALWAYS have to ruin EVERYTHING? Pull the ham linking down and see how fast they start screaming though the ARRL lobby. 

1. This isn’t a new rule, and

2. Why would you want to hurt ham radio repeaters?  They didn’t do this to you, and

3. Of course you can talk to your friends. You still have a phone right?

[PugetSounder]

People need to think about the delay that exists in linking repeaters. The more repeaters, the bigger the delay. This is not a problem with trained hams that meet and discuss operational procedures. They are trained on what to expect.

Now get a bunch of newbies with a fresh GMRS license and a $25 radio and you will hear a ton of partial transmissions, people stepping on each other and requests to try again.

I spent 8 years in NATO (Germany and Italy) and just making a simple phone call across the Atlantic was an issue because of the delay. Even though we knew that there was a delay, it was still difficult to time your words without stepping on each other.

[WRXB215]

On 2/21/2024 at 8:28 AM, Lscott said:

Are all of them linked together on the same system?

I just now looked at a handful of them. Only one in that group appears to be linked.

Also, most of them are closed patch but there are a few that are open.

[DominoDog]

On 2/19/2024 at 11:33 AM, RayP said:

Sorry, but I must disagree.  Given the original intent of Class A Citizens Band/GMRS radio, of facilitating reliable local area communications between family and friends, linking is neither normal nor expected in this radio service.  In areas with cellular dead spots, or where people may wish to have backup comms for the possibility of a cellular outage, a well-engineered and fortuitously located stand-alone repeater can be a real blessing to the community, county, or larger area that it provides coverage to.  A cellular outage lasting a few hours could create a minor panic if a family member were not heard from in some time when they normally call or "check in" by a given time each day.  Likewise, emergencies such as severe weather, missing persons where a community fields volunteers to search an area, etc, could be well served by such a repeater. Linking to other repeaters outside of your area, especially across the state or across the nation provides no practical or necessary comms for your local area.  Instead, more often than not, they jam up one or more of the only eight repeater/50W simplex channels with inane and pointless chatter from other areas which have little or no bearing or interest to your local area.  Frequently, chatter on only one or maybe two of the linked repeaters, ties up multiple repeaters and frequency pairs unnecessarily, hampering efforts to use the remaining repeaters in their local area, or just someone wanting to use 50W simplex to communicate locally, only to be washed out by the linked repeaters.  The only real purpose I have seen in linking to distant repeaters and networks is to give the repeater owner doing the linking a level of Freudian "compensation", as they imagine the masses gathering to admire how far theirs can reach.  In reality, most who are not newbies are not impressed.

The technology used in linking is the same technology that allows most cell phones to make long distance calls.  If you really get your jollies talking long distance over a commonplace network, call a friend or relative in another state.  If you have no friends or relatives in another state, call a motel desk clerk elsewhere and ask them questions about their rates.  You have just achieved the same exact thing as you do talking to or listening to a bunch of ratchetjaws many states away on a GMRS linked system, but without jamming scarce spectrum.  If you really want to do VOIP DX, talk with the nice man or woman in India who calls to help you get a better rate on your credit card, next time they call.  YEEEE HAW!

IF that still leaves you dissatisfied, do the minimal studying required to get your Technician Class ham license and put up or utilize one of the many VHF/UHF networks there.  While the linking there is annoying too, they at least have a lot more pairs (than our GMRS eight) to do these networks on.

 

Well, I won't say that every repeater needs to be linked, or that they should. In fact there are some linked repeaters that I wish were not linked for the reasons you mentioned. But I do not think we should have laws that say it can't be done. If people want to do that and think they need it, then who am I and who are you to say they can't?

I really just want to give your comment a dislike because I didn't really see much benefit from it. You compared repeaters to phone lines and tried to be funny. Not really impressed.

The bottom line is it needs to be up to the repeater owner, not Bill or Joe on the Internet that likes to make jokes and pointed comments. If people have a community that could be better served with a linked GMRS repeater, then they should have that option and not have their hands tied by unclear rules.

[WRUQ758]

On 2/21/2024 at 8:24 PM, Sshannon said:

1. This isn’t a new rule, and

2. Why would you want to hurt ham radio repeaters?  They didn’t do this to you, and

3. Of course you can talk to your friends. You still have a phone right?

Answers:

1. They JUST added "any other networks" after this meeting on the FCC website

2. Who stood up at that meeting and opened their mouth causing this "clarification" 

3. Thats an absurd response. GMRS Nationwide was not a problem, a LOT of comradery, & PPL from all over talking and making friends. 

Now GMRS N.W., Not A Rubicon and others have pulled the plug. It's ridiculous. Not all of us live in urban areas surrounded by repeaters, but we all have cell towers and adding Zello made it easy to join the GMRS community - not anymore....

[WRUQ758]

On 2/20/2024 at 10:00 PM, WRKC935 said:

But you are NOT going to link a system the size of the MidWest group totally on Microwave hops. 

 

I sure hope they don't take that system down next. I travel through that area and I am permissioned on all repeaters. it's a fun, busy system with great people (except for one idiot in Hammond). That would really take the cake if that system is shut down bec of this stupid nonsense promulgated by one idiot at a meeting. 

[Sshannon]

1 hour ago, WRUQ758 said:

They JUST added "any other networks" after this meeting on the FCC website

No, there are posts in this thread from 2018 that include quotes of the rules which clearly show that the phrase “any other networks” existed years ago.