FCC Invites Comments on Katrina Panel Recommendations:

Comments are due Monday, August 7, in response to an FCC Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) regarding recommendations of the independent panel that reviewed Hurricane Katrina's impact on communication systems (EB Docket 06-119). Reply comments are due by Monday, August 21.

"The Commission, in this proceeding, is to take the lessons learned from this disaster and build upon them to promote more effective, efficient response and recovery efforts as well as heightened readiness and preparedness in the future," the FCC said.

Some of the wide-ranging proposals in the NPRM, released in June, could affect the Part 97 Amateur Service rules. The FCC asked if it should explore amending its rules to permit automatic grants of certain types of waivers or special temporary authority (STA) in declared disaster areas. After last year's devastating hurricanes, the FCC issued a handful of STAs to permit licensees lacking HF privileges to operate on HF for emergency purposes.

The NPRM further offered three specific areas for consideration: Waiver of Amateur Radio and license-exempt rules, permitting transmissions necessary to meet essential communications needs; waiver of application filing deadlines, something the FCC did last fall for amateurs living in hurricane-stricken states; and a streamlined STA process.

Interested parties may file comments and view the comments of others via the Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/ecfs/. In either case, enter "06-119" in the "Proceeding" field (without quotation marks but including the hyphen). A copy of the NPRM is on the FCC Web site http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-06-83A1.pdf.

Source:

The ARRL Letter Vol. 25, No. 28 July 14, 2006

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