If there was one lesson that came out of the FCC Forum at the recent Dayton Hamvention it is not ask the FCC to re-regulate any aspect of the service because its just not going to happen. Case in point, the recently denied petition filed with the agency by Mark Miller, N5RFX.
The FCC's Bill Cross says that the rules now in place are more than adequate to minimize interference from digital operations to other existing modes:

--
Cross: "The request that we limit the subbands for automatically controlled digital stations are permitted to transmit on to only those specified in (Part) 97 is curious because the rules as they are today limit transmissions from these stations to a bandwidth of no more than 500 cycles or Hz. on frequencies authorized for RTTY and data emissions outside of the automatically control subbands, when a locally or remote controlled station is interrogating that automatic station. If the idea behind this request was to limit these stations to the subbands to minimize interference, we were not persuaded that limiting stations that were transmitting in response to interrogation by a station where there was a control operator present would cause increased interference because these stations are already limited to a 500 Hz. bandwidth."

--
In other words, the technology of tomorrow is about here and its up to all of us in the ham community to learn how to introduce it and how use it without the help of the FCC.

[ARNewsline]