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FCC Shut down...
- Thread starter knoxbob
- Start date
Yeah, you wanna know what your Rangemaster or Procaster can really do? Try a few creative set-ups while furloughed agents from the Enforcement Bureau are home cooling their heels. This shutdown could last for days.
Once the FCC gets back up and running, they should extend ALL CPs (even the ones that don't expire until 2016) by at least the number of business days lost. The ones that expire within the next six months should all be extended by a month or more to reduce the backlog that will probably develop
The fact that only about 2% of the FCC staff is considered to be "essential" makes one wonder what the FCC really does. They keep people from doing illegal things that they want to do, but there is little real harm when they actually do them. The FCC is a law enforcement agency for laws that do not matter very much, at least in the short term.
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You are apparently seeing the FCC only as the gatekeeper of the audio broadcast band. What about that part of the FCC responsible for establishing technical standards and allocations for police radio, aviation communications, the telephone industry, land lines; the telephone industry, cell phones; the internet industry, the wirelss devices used in concerts and worship venues, planning for future satellite communications, and on and on and on. EDIT: And there is marine radio and weather radar to be managed and regulated too.
There is more to the FCC tasks than deciding who gets a 100 watt FM radio station in the LPFM scheme, or who can operate a Part 15 neighborhood transmitter. By the way, how is your garage door opener operating today. Better hope the FCC gets back up to speed or your car may rot in your garage.
You are apparently seeing the FCC only as the gatekeeper of the audio broadcast band. What about that part of the FCC responsible for establishing technical standards and allocations for police radio, aviation communications, the telephone industry, land lines; the telephone industry, cell phones; the internet industry, the wirelss devices used in concerts and worship venues, planning for future satellite communications, and on and on and on. EDIT: And there is marine radio and weather radar to be managed and regulated too.
There is more to the FCC tasks than deciding who gets a 100 watt FM radio station in the LPFM scheme, or who can operate a Part 15 neighborhood transmitter. By the way, how is your garage door opener operating today. Better hope the FCC gets back up to speed or your car may rot in your garage.
What nonsense! I'm pretty sure that nobody on this forum needs a Federal agent to open his garage door. The FCC can stay shut down a while longer as far as I'm concerned.
It wasn't my intention to suggest that you needed all the FCC employees on duty this week or your garage door opening might quit working.
In various threads in the RD Forums this week people are suggesting the regulating broadcast sepectrum is the only duty the FCC has. You were not quite that specific, but the tea you were drinking had that same odor about it.
My point was that the FCC has much, much, much more that broadcast radio on their plate. Your garage door opener hopefully works well because the FCC had hearings, invited industry input, and set a side from frequency for your garage door opener. Then they set up standards which when followed, should keep your garage door opener from ringing your neighbors doorbell, triggering the stop-light down at the intersection, and hopefully your garage door opener will not interrupt the wireless microphone of the Baptist preacher down the street.
So the small team that devotes their life to the design of garage door openers, and the similar team a few cubicles down that regulate the frequencies used by hobbyists who fly little R/C airplanes and the lady in the next cubicle who does research specifications for the little transmitter the Baptist preacher uses... all of these folks we might tell to stay home this week because it is not ESSENTIAL that their work be done THIS WEEK. Maybe next month will be just fine. Maybe some are working on a hearing deadline for March 2014. So we can declare them non-essential for this week. That is different than declaring them useless.
I did not say that the FCC employees are useless, but the fact that nearly 98% of them are not needed immediately speaks volumes. I, personally, can hold out until June, 2022 without having to contact the FCC. That is when my ham license expires. Maybe I will want to get a transmitter design certified in the meantime. Neither of these things are real "needs", however, but arbitrary requirements imposed by the law. I, for one, will not be holding my breath waiting for the FCC to reopen.
Am doing some minor filing work ....
WAS doing some minor filing work ..... disassociated with the proposed new window, when the
Friendly Candy Company packed their stuff and went on DXpeditions of an indefinite duration.
Or wherever furloughed federal communications people go.
Perhaps a few went to Fort Collins to see if WWV has any temp work.
This government strike (against itself) holds all kinds of portent for everyone, of course, not just
LPFM, Part 15, commercial applicants, et al. Yet, each section to which the 800,000 pickets have to
regroup have their own re-mustering routines to compensate.
Vis-a-vis the FCC per se : I don't think many of those in the CDBS office are going to be very happy at all,
returning to their desks on October 16th, and finding a pile of electronic filing requests the size of, oh, let's say
the height above average terrain of the Washington Monument.
If the federal stalemate ends before then -- even tomorrow -- expect these folks to push the LPFM filing date
to early November at the soonest. To me that makes the most sense and buys some more time for applicants
to get up and running during better weather. I believe the original LPFM filing window gave the CP holder 180 days
to fire up. (I could be wrong). If 180 days was the case, six months from early November gives the new
CP grants until May. May is a great time for that sort of outdoor, touch-up engineering work.
WAS doing some minor filing work ..... disassociated with the proposed new window, when the
Friendly Candy Company packed their stuff and went on DXpeditions of an indefinite duration.
Or wherever furloughed federal communications people go.
Perhaps a few went to Fort Collins to see if WWV has any temp work.
This government strike (against itself) holds all kinds of portent for everyone, of course, not just
LPFM, Part 15, commercial applicants, et al. Yet, each section to which the 800,000 pickets have to
regroup have their own re-mustering routines to compensate.
Vis-a-vis the FCC per se : I don't think many of those in the CDBS office are going to be very happy at all,
returning to their desks on October 16th, and finding a pile of electronic filing requests the size of, oh, let's say
the height above average terrain of the Washington Monument.
If the federal stalemate ends before then -- even tomorrow -- expect these folks to push the LPFM filing date
to early November at the soonest. To me that makes the most sense and buys some more time for applicants
to get up and running during better weather. I believe the original LPFM filing window gave the CP holder 180 days
to fire up. (I could be wrong). If 180 days was the case, six months from early November gives the new
CP grants until May. May is a great time for that sort of outdoor, touch-up engineering work.
Since the CDBS is unavailable I don't think returning workers will find a stack of anything to process. But as soon as it becomes available they should expect a tsunami of filings.
From what I understand, nothing is happening with the FCC at this point. You can conduct no business/transactions. The amount of work on the table should be the same as the day of the shutdown. Now, the day after, I would not be looking forward to if I was an employee there. An old friend use to say a workday off was like a night of drinking, you always paid for it the next day.
Probably the first week or two should be busy. I think the LPFM filing should be postponed until early 2014
The FCC is definitely back in business! One of the first items on the reopened website is the publication of NALs issued to five wireless companies for giving Obamaphones to many people not eligible for the government largesse. The total of of the penalties the five companies are required to pay is $14,400,000.
Ahhhh! Did that make you feel good and powerful. It's not everyday that rank-and-file citizens can step on their soapbox and treat the office of president as though the occupant of the White House is to blame for everything the citizen might dislike.
The free cell phones program is reported to be something implemented by the BUSH administration. If you feel good insulting the office The President, maybe you should have reported " .... NALs issued to five wireless companies for giving DUBYAphones to many people not eligibile......"
Now that I got that off my chest: what did the NAL report? Did people who weren't eligible for phones received them (shame on those greedy people!!!!) or did phone companies continue to refuse to do their job and keep up the list of elegible people who already have a phone... and the COMPANY gave them a SECOND or THIRD phone?
Slap the President around. Slap some poor people around. What else can we do today to have a good time? As Boortz is/was fond of saying: "Who have we not made angry yet today?" (actually, Boortz has a slightly more earthy terminology he uses in that question.)
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