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I feel compelled to point out...

On point #1: The radios you refer to are in the Family Radio Service. It would not be practical to use them to trigger a bomb because -- guess what? -- Anyone else using an FRS radio on the same frequency could trigger such prematurely.

Point #2 is more plausible, but I can tell you from direct experience that the control transmitters for model aircraft are BIG. Very difficult to conceal, let alone operate surreptitiously.

On point #3: Again, with any receiver that just detects a carrier or similar signal, as could be produced by a spark-gapper, you're running the risk of triggering a device prematurely, especially if the receiver is broad-banded and someone happens to key their portable radio near enough to it. Spark-gap devices are very noisy as well, and practically impossible to operate in 'stealth' mode.

Now, with all that said, and to answer your original question: A jamming device, being (in most cases) a simple transmitter or sweep oscillator, can be made as narrow or as broad-banded as available funds or circumstances dictate. It's perfectly feasible to construct one that will kill cellphones, but permit conventional radio traffic to pass unhindered. Remember that a great many police, fire, and public service agencies still depend on good ole' FM analog radios, and said radios operate well away from cellular frequencies (with a few exceptions).

For the record, the FCC's FAQ on the issue states very clearly that the USF is an obligation of the telecom carrier that they're allowed to shift onto their consumers, but they clearly don't have to.

So, basically, this is just a way for them to itemize it like it's a tax, when really its a tax on the telecom company rather than one on the consumer at the point of sale.

Just like the IDT ads claim, the big guys even try to pass their own property taxes off to the consumers by a fee.

Please be aware that you need at least a General class license plus 5wpm in order to transmit to alternate universes. You really don't want the Parallel Comminications Commision on your ass.

If this book is correct, and the benefits of educational computing are overrated, perhaps it's time to consider repealing some of the universal service fee (a.k.a. the Gore tax) tacked onto phone bills to wire the schools? (We're not talking pennies here; the FCC collects $2+ billion each year.)

There's a standard, called OpenCable, but the cable industry hates it. There's a huge battle going on right now, involving the "broadcast flag", the FCC's rules on opening up the cable box market, the consumer TV industry, and the content people.

The cable industry certified to the FCC that they were in compliance with the OpenCable standard as of January 1, 2000. Ask your cable provider for the supposedly-available "digital POD" (a smart-card like device that handles the encryption) and see how far you get.

Hang on a second,

You think you're getting back at the spammer, but here's what's really happening. I work for a mid-sized toll free 800 services provider. These bastards sign up for our services, pay the first month's cost on the system, advertise illegally, and then never pay the cost of the usage. They collect whatever amount of successful business they get, many times by spamming starting Friday night so we don't get the complaints and shut them down until Monday morning, and then when we cancel their system for abuse, they don't pay the usage bill, which is often a flood of callers screaming at them in voicemail. Then a few of the callers look up who manages the 800 number of the spammer, figure out it is our company, and they call us and scream and/or report us to the FCC or FTC for spamming, when we're not the ones doing it. This is a very very common problem for 800 toll free services providers. There is little we can do to stop it. We rapidly answer supoenas from Attornies General of states, and we report these spammers to the FCC, including every bit of information we can gather regarding the spammer. Sometimes the systems are purchased with fake credit cards. We try to ban their names and aliases, and we have a person who visually screens the orders for known spammers and fake looking orders. With all of our efforts, and by complying with all telecom regulations and reporting fraud and phone/fax abuse to the FCC, we still suffer from these morons every month. There's nothing to stop some fax spammer from getting a new name, new credit card, buying an 800 number, fax spamming up a storm, and putting that 800 number they bought from us as the call-back number.

Now, we do NOT allow people to abuse our outbound fax system for the spamming, this is typically done either with their own equipment or through some spam-friendly service. Our fax system doesn't allow faxing to large enough groups of numbers for anything but standard office groupware type faxing. All of our outbound services are heavily monitored for abuse.

My point is this: You think by flooding the 800 number with phone calls and wasting their minutes that you are punishing the spammer. That's assuming the bastard is going to pay his bill, when quite frequently, he is not. We end up paying his bill while we do everything possible to rapidly kill spam accounts and report them to authorities. If you really want to help resolve this problem, the proper response is to report them to the FCC. If the FCC receives enough complaints, they act and people get taken down (we've seen it). You can easily fill out the abuse report form located here on the FCC's site: http://svartifoss2.fcc.gov/cib/fcc475.cfm

Please, understand that unlike email spammers who have positive relationships with their providers, phone providers are actually under the gun with the FCC and rarely do they ever willingly partake in phone/fax spamming which is clearly illegal under FCC and FTC regulations. Since they aren't working with us in a positive relationship, they know they can screw us and not pay their bill.

Did a search to see if I could find any additional information and found that Flamingo Travel has incorrectly had calls going to their number. They have their front page modified to point people to the correct number as other posters have listed. They also have this link to fcc.gov for filing complaints against unwanted faxes.

Sounds like some people have hit the wrong target.

Part 15 of the FCC rules cover unlicensed broadcasting.. You can basically use something like a 100th of a watt without an FCC license. I don't know all of the details, but their site could tell you.

Just out of curiosity, you say that IC sells spots to stations, do they then own them outright? Here in the states the airwaves (theoretically) are publically owned. Each station is granted a license for a specific period of time, which is of course renewable. In the "old days" you actually had to show you did public service and community interest programming, among other thigns, before the FCC would renew the license.. Now, it's pretty much a given that you'll be renewed unless you did something really, really wrong

-A

• Back in the early 90's, Free Radio Berkeley advertised radio transmitter kits for sale and was unable to ship them on time, leaving many paying customers hanging for months without any feedback. In response to the inevitable complaints, rather than apologize or politely explain unforeseen circumstances, Mr. Dunifer tells them to kiss my ass.
  
  
• Around the same timeframe, FRB announces that they have been "invited" to Lollapalooza to set up booths and give demonstrations of pirate radio. I put the word invited in quotes because FRB got turned away at the gate at Lollapalooza at many tour locations. Blame it on poor planning by FRB, communications/coordination problems with Lollapalooza sponsors, or the whole thing inevitably degrading into a say-you're-with-FRB-and-you-get-into-Lollapalooza- for-free scam.
  
  
• In 1998, after three years of tilting at windmills filing appeals in federal courts, Stephen Dunifer's own pirate radio station is shut down. The judge granted the U.S. Attorney's motion for summary judgement, and issued a permanent injunction.
  
  

From the pictures of the test device in the FCC application , it appears that the bottom of the "coke can" has a slot that contains the SIM card. It also looks like the "can" was assembled from two pieces.Coka-cola Corp may change the packaging to make it less visible than in the test device, but it may be possible to find winners by looking at the bottom.

Looking at the FCC docs, and this one in particular. The is a photo of the bottom of the can. On the bottom is a label, on this is text that says "Made in Finland". What the betting that the device has been made by Nokia?

I got the 18.8 from here http://www.cedmagazine.com/ced/9808/9808d.htm and have seen figures in the 18.8-19.4 range thrown around quite a bit. Scientific Atlanta says 19.25, another CED article says it varies a bit depending on content and SD is 2-3Mbps and the ATSC standard caps the HDTV MPEG-2 stream at 19.39 Mbps. OK, I found a FAQ at the FCC that places the max at 19.3 Mbps. Seems low to me too but if they have the time and the right (expensive) equipment that would allow better compression. Still not good enough IMHO.

Also I should note that when we went to 2k operators started to complain that the image was grainy. It turns out that's because they were actually able to see the grain of the film. That can be cleaned up a bit of course, but I think for 4k to really be viable it's going to have to be all digital.

Odd, That slashdot article and other things that I have seen places the resolution of 35mm film at about 4000 lines, but I suspect different films have different grain size.

Related amusing annectdote: When my wife came home after I got done hooking up our HDTV (to our super-crappy AT&T cable) her innitial reaction was "That looks like shit! We paid $1000 for that?!" I had to explain to her that our signal had always looked like shit, it's just that now we had a TV that was good enough that we could tell.

Tell me about it, SD is very disappointing. At least the local comcast cable delivers quite a few HD signals.

Here's some information about this from the FCC:
FCC DTV Standards

and the people that made the standard (OpenCable, same people that made DOCSIS):
OpenCable Standard

Remember that the FCC Commissioner is appointed by the President (google cache)... and that this is an election year. If you care, use your power and vote them out.

While not exactly a la carte, I did come across this fact sheet that describes a little known provision about getting individual channels.

Instead of "Broadband Reports reports that RCR Wireless News reports that the FCC said..." let's just see what the FCC said: news release, Powell statement.

Instead of "Broadband Reports reports that RCR Wireless News reports that the FCC said..." let's just see what the FCC said: news release, Powell statement.

As others have posted, the 800Mhz band is far more valuable to operators than the 1900 band. This is due to building penetration benefits that the 800 spectrum provides...

The reason that Verizon, et al, is so upset, is that they are offering new frequency to Nextel. From Daily Wireless: "Verizon Wireless remains ready to participate in an immediate auction of a nationwide license for the 10 megahertz (specifically the 1910-1915/1990-1995 MHz)."

According to the FCC Website: "Broadband PCS is allocated spectrum ranging from 1850-1910 MHz and 1930-1990 MHz. "

This would be a new subblock of the PCS band, that could be used _nationwide_, which is why Verizon has said it is worth 5 billion. Also, every time the FCC has released new spectrum for phone services, they've auctioned off those new services to the highest bidder.

Keep in mind, cell phones and towers produce weak enough signals where a jammer oculd be reasonable effective over short distances even while complying with Part 15 FCC regulations. These regulations give one almost free reign to do what one wants as long as the power is low enough.

First off, cable companies are already regulated.

In fact, the broadband market should already be very well opened to competition through regulation. It's been many years since The Telecommunication Act of 1996 was passed to do open their markets. The question is why is it not working out like predicted? There are a few companies that are moving into very specific cable markets, like Knology. However, this act was supposed to open up all markets (telcomm, cable, wireless, satellite) to anyone who wanted to sell services over existing bandwidth.

The fact we aren't seeing more competition can only be explained (a) if there are no interested firms, (b) if existing customers are too apathetic to new/quality services, or (c) if the regulation of the act are not being enforced. Does anyone know how the regulations of this act have played out in the past eight years in corportate practice? The article seems to indicate that FCC has been dragging their feet enforcing at least the cable market.

As far as I can tell, the regulation of TA1996 should be more than adequate for competition, in theory. Maybe future regulation will be a federal push encouraging existing carriers to roll out broadband to rural locations, although most people have satellite out there.

<sarcasm>Yeah cuz the multinationals and Government types don't have any control over the airwaves. If we can just get the net off the wire controlled by the evil corporations it will truly be free of outside control!</sarcasm>

You can put the tin-foil hat away now. Depending on who you ask your viewpoint is either paranoid (what corporate control?) or justified but we can't do anything about it anyway (for the aforementioned reason of Government control of the airwaves).

Of course not, which is why it isn't happening. The 2006 change over is to DIGITAL not HD. All HDTV signals are digital, but not all digital signals are hd.

Example: If you get DBS Satelite (Dish Network, DirecTv) you are getting a digital signal. If you have digital cable you're getting a partialy digitial signal.

The reason this is happening is because the FCC wants to get the Analog bands back. My understanding of this (which may be flawed, you network gurus can feel free to chime in on this) is that a digital broadcast requires less bandwidth now than the equivilient quality signal in analog. The result is that the digitial spectrum can be smaller for the same amount of content.

This gives the FCC more bandwidth to allocate for other uses, many of which may be found in emerging markets such as wireless networking devieces, particularly in the PAN and MAN arenas.

The receivers matter a great deal less here, because most TVs sold within the last 7 years or so allready have a digital tuner. The difference between HD and SD is huge, but if you're not a TV buff the only measureable advantage you'll have is that the bandwidth previously reserved for TV will be reallocated by the government for other purposes, some of which might benefit you.

[438 U.S. 726, 751-55 (1978)] FCC v Pacifica (1978)-- Pacifica owned an FM radio station, WBAI, in New York. It played a recorded monologue by comedian George Carlin called "The Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television." The station aired the monologue in the middle of a weekday afternoon. One listener, who was riding in his car with his son, heard the broadcast and was not amused. He complained to the FCC.
The commission reprimanded Pacifica. Pacifica appealed to the US Supreme Court. The Court agreed that Pacifica should be reprimanded but ruled that the monologue was not obscene, based on the Miller tests.

On the subject of indecency, the Supreme Court established the fundamental framework for analyzing sex and violence on television in its 1978 Pacifica decision. Pacifica involved George Carlin's "seven dirty words" monologue. A father was driving in his car with his child at two o'clock in the afternoon when they heard part of the monologue. It's a funny routine, but it's not suitable for children, he thought, and he complained to the FCC. Our decision in his favor went to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court recognized that the monologue was not obscene and that the routine had been preceded by a statement that it was not suitable for children. But the Court held that the broadcaster could be penalized -- perhaps even lose its license -- if it played such material when children were likely to be in the audience.

i only just found out - it's not publicised in the media, I guess. note that if you go and look on the fcc website, it's not mentioned.

IANAR, but it's important to have the facts straight. The parent poster is correct. Discredit where discredit is due.

Found here: http://www.fcc.gov/parents/content.html

Expressions of views that do not involve a "clear and present danger of serious substantive evil" come under the protection of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

wtf is up with our goverment's usage of the word "evil"? It's getting very annoying.

-metric

If you search past Slashdot archives, you will see discussions where /. users are pining over the low low rates in Sweden and some areas of Japan.

Here's an interesting report (Adobe Reader required).

Some research has been about USDTV's operation in Utah and they appear to be using channels that have been allocated to the "Utah State Board of Regents", which is the state board responsible for overseeing education in Utah.

IANAL, but according to FCC regulations (47CFR73) "noncommercial educational broadcast stations will be licensed only to nonprofit educational organizations upon a showing that the proposed stations will be used primarily to serve the educational needs of the community; for the advancement of educational programs; and to furnish a nonprofit and noncommercial television broadcast service."

We feel USDTV might be in violation of these regulations and we've been searching for answers as to the nature of the agreement between the two entities. So far our efforts to contact them have not yeilded results. Does anyone have any understanding of how they are able to license this "non-commercial" bandwidth?

Credit for most of the research goes to Luke Jenkins. There's a complete history of the research he's been doing to get to the bottom of this matter here: http://a.zzq.org/kulc/

Basically, the FCC says your neighborhood association can place restrictions on where you put the dish, but can't prohibit its installation.

FCC rules for Digital Television mandate that broadcasters must transmit at least one free over-the-air stream in their digital signal to the public just like current TV. However, they can charge for ancillary services like internet (~19 mbps!), pay-per-view, etc. that are in parallel streams. So if you buy the receiver you'll probably need a descrambler and subscription to access the premium content.

Check this list to see what stations are operating in your area. Call them and ask what kinds of services they will be offering. many stations simulcast their regular lineup as part of the FCC transition program.

The civil libertarians realize what none of the tin-foil hat paranoiacs on /. do. This does nothing at all to expand the legal authority of the FBI or anyone else to tap communications. The same laws (and the same amendments to the U.S. Constitution) still make it a serious pain in the a$$ to get a wiretap order. This proposal simply would have the FCC impose standards on the infrastructure so that once the legal hurdles are overcome, technical ones don't halt an investigation.

Obviously, the first step in defending our rights and freedoms is vigilance. Everyone give yourself a pat on the back for vigilance.

The next and essential step is actually identifying the real problem. Here the problem is not that the proposal will "dramatically expand the scope of the agency's wiretap powers," because it can't. First, no law specifically authorizes the FBI's wiretap powers, but the gov'ts. Second, the FCC has NO AUTHORITY WHATSOEVER to define when law enforcement can or cannot tap someone's communications. Third, it it was such a realistic threat, it would have already happened, as such laws and regulations have been implemented in the past.

To protect your rights, you must know your rights and understand the system, so that you know when you're really threatened and how and where to direct your energy. Read before you (continue to) rant:

1. Things like this are already required as explained in this summary of this law (remember CALEA from 1994?)!

2. The authority to wiretap anyone's communication is governed not by the FCC but by this amendment to the Constitution (with informative analysis) and this statute.

This is a threat to your ISP service bill and the quality of the services and software, not your constitutional rights. I don't want to live in a market where all communications products have legally mandated back doors, either. But not because I'm afraid the FBI (or NSA or MS or anyone) will then be able to eavesdrop on everything I do. They lack the resources, the skills, and the authority to do that whether the FCC accepts this proposal or not.

Not to say it's necessarily a good idea, but contrary to the spin in the article (and here on /.), this proposal does nothing at all to expand the legal authority of the FBI or anyone else to tap communications. The same laws (and the same amendments to the U.S. Constitution) still make it a serious pain in the a$$ to get a wiretap order. This proposal simply would have the FCC impose standards on the infrastructure so that once the legal hurdles are overcome, technical ones don't halt an investigation. This has been done before without turning the US into a facist state. Obviously, the first step in defending our rights and freedoms is vigilance. Everyone (even C|Net) give yourself a pat on the back for vigilance, even if you've missed the real point and mis-stated the law in alarmist fashion (like C|Net). The next and essential step is actually identifying the real problem. Here the problem is not that the proposal will "dramatically expand the scope of the agency's wiretap powers," because it can't. First, no law specifically authorizes the FBI's wiretap powers, but the gov'ts. Second, the FCC has NO AUTHORITY WHATSOEVER to define when law enforcement can or cannot tap someone's communications. Third, it it was such a realistic threat, it would have already happened, as such laws and regulations have been implemented in the past. To protect our rights, we must know our rights and understand the system, so that we know when we're really threatened and how and where to direct our energy. Read before you (continue to) rant: 1. Things like this are already required as explained in of (remember CALEA from 1994?)! 2. The authority to wiretap anyone's communication is governed not by the FCC but by to the Constitution (with informative analysis) and . This is a threat to your ISP service bill and the quality of the services and software, not your constitutional rights. I don't want to live in a market where all communications products have legally mandated back doors, either. But not because I'm afraid the FBI (or NSA or MS or anyone) will then be able to eavesdrop on everything I do. They lack the resources, the skills, and the authority to do that whether the FCC accepts this proposal or not.

The FCC has no purview over the content of cable, or satellite

Viacom is disrupting my TV

1. is correct. The 10kHz band per station allotted to AM stations versus a 200 kHz band alloted per station in the FM does mean worse fidelity, but the decision of to amount of bandwidth to allocate per station was imposed by regulations and the FCC, not with any inherent property of the modulation method or radio wavelength... or with market forces.

1a. Allowing a wider band to use per station inherently implies that the current assigned slots for stations would have to be allocated differently. If each station were allowed, to use your example, a 50kHz band we could no longer allocate stations 10 kHz apart. Yes, this would require either a larger total band allowed to AM radio or a lowering of the number of stations. Lowering their broadcast power has little to do with this.

The decisions of how to allocate radio frequencies are complicated. You're right that at this point it wouldn't be worth it to allow larger bandwidth to AM stations, as FM Stereo has filled that niche... but the post I was responding to claimed the failure of AM Stereo radio as an example of a market-driven phenomenon where it was in fact a regulation-driven phenomenon.

1b. A combination of power output allowed? AM stations are allowed less power (50kW) than their FM counterparts(100kW)- which is in turn caused by their interference with one another, which is in turn caused to the small bands they are allocated by the FCC. Again, the quality differences are imposed from the FCC, not inherent to the modulation.

2) is a good point, and is the principal disadvantage of the wavelengths used for AM radio. It would probably not be as bad on hypothetical wider band AM stations operating at power levels similar to FM stations, but it would still be a problem. Where I grew up, thunderstorms only happened maybe once a year, but not everyone lives in a desert and I hear that in other areas they're slightly more common. :-)

1. is correct. The 10kHz band per station allotted to AM stations versus a 200 kHz band alloted per station in the FM does mean worse fidelity, but the decision of to amount of bandwidth to allocate per station was imposed by regulations and the FCC, not with any inherent property of the modulation method or radio wavelength... or with market forces.

1a. Allowing a wider band to use per station inherently implies that the current assigned slots for stations would have to be allocated differently. If each station were allowed, to use your example, a 50kHz band we could no longer allocate stations 10 kHz apart. Yes, this would require either a larger total band allowed to AM radio or a lowering of the number of stations. Lowering their broadcast power has little to do with this.

The decisions of how to allocate radio frequencies are complicated. You're right that at this point it wouldn't be worth it to allow larger bandwidth to AM stations, as FM Stereo has filled that niche... but the post I was responding to claimed the failure of AM Stereo radio as an example of a market-driven phenomenon where it was in fact a regulation-driven phenomenon.

1b. A combination of power output allowed? AM stations are allowed less power (50kW) than their FM counterparts(100kW)- which is in turn caused by their interference with one another, which is in turn caused to the small bands they are allocated by the FCC. Again, the quality differences are imposed from the FCC, not inherent to the modulation.

2) is a good point, and is the principal disadvantage of the wavelengths used for AM radio. It would probably not be as bad on hypothetical wider band AM stations operating at power levels similar to FM stations, but it would still be a problem. Where I grew up, thunderstorms only happened maybe once a year, but not everyone lives in a desert and I hear that in other areas they're slightly more common. :-)

Yes. See FCC ruling. One of such radars
I believe the issue of opening up this frequency for automotive use is currently being debated in Europe, too.
There are protected bands around 23.7 GHz for ammonia spectral lines.See this list.

In the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking the FCC says that BPL is being deployed worldwide, but I don't see any mention of the study in the UK citing interference, or the incident in Austria that caused them to cut their study short.

Listen to the 2/12/04 FCC meeting at: http://www.fcc.gov/realaudio/agendameetings.html

They discuss BPL and how they will deal with interference and questions regarding the regulation of BPL services. The key thing is that BPL should be compliant with Part 15 rules. A must listen.

There are many confused and mis-informed comments on this subject here. If someone's really interested, they can take about 15 minutes to read the actual text of the FCC's notice of proposed rule making (NPRM).

I've got more background on my blog, which cover BPL, FTTH and wireless broadband news. (You can also search the archives using the built-in search function).

Finally, the Virginia Journal of Law and Technology had a draft article on the technology and legal issues that was posted on the FCC's web site a month or two ago.

There are many confused and mis-informed comments on this subject here. If someone's really interested, they can take about 15 minutes to read the actual text of the FCC's notice of proposed rule making (NPRM).

I've got more background on my blog, which cover BPL, FTTH and wireless broadband news. (You can also search the archives using the built-in search function).

Finally, the Virginia Journal of Law and Technology had a draft article on the technology and legal issues that was posted on the FCC's web site a month or two ago.

VoIP is a service being provided by private companies--you're not locked into anything. Why forcefully regluate things like this when a free market would naturally provide each consumer with what _they_ want?

VoIP is one thing, VoIP that accesses the PSTN is another.

While entirely Internet-based VoIP services are "unregulated information services", anything that touches the PSTN is heavily regulated. This is a fact of life like gravity, death, and taxes, and complaining about it is useless and pointless.

E911 site seems to disagree with you. The Wireless Communications and Safety Act of 1999 (frequently referred to as the 911 Act) is the bill that required national 911 compliance by September '02. It has been required for about a year and a half now.

Oh look, the real world has expectations of the new medium. How tragic. Turns out there's some value-add we can't overlook in the over-priced, over-regulated, monopolized phone system. VoIP want's to compete with/replace POTS, it will have to meet the standard of POTS. Nothing to see here, please move along.

The question I have is whether VoIP will be expected to provide the same level of universal access that we have with the phone system. I doubt it. They'll probably just cherry pick their customers like the broadband carriers. The Slashdot crowd will grouse whenever the "legacy" system cries foul and tries to prevent this. Learn something here.

This naive attitude about regulation and competition ("This is the first step in regulating an industry that should have been left alone...") pisses me off. There are good reasons for the regulatory system. There were good reasons why, at one point, you couldn't connect anything other than genuine Ma-Bell gear to Ma-Bell's lines, and there were good reasons for changing that, and the reasons had nothing to do with keeping the proverbial fat cats fat, despite what you want to believe. In fact you, dear reader, most likely lack the knowledge and experience necessary to cope with the reasons, and I'd appreciate it if you would behave as such. The reasons have to do with reliability, ubiquity and stability (read: not neato geek fun) in an enterprise that involves hundreds of billions of dollars of capital that must survive decades of reality. We get all that cheap and have for a century. Take your file-pirating, selectively lazie-fare opinion and stuff it where the bits rot.

Don't need to go that far. We just need to jazz up E911

Indeed. Compare the current FCC enforcement page with the enforcement page from a few months ago. Look at what's at the top of "What We Do" in each case.

The OEM remote control for my Chrysler Concord has FCCID GQ43VT9T. Which is registered to a company called TRW (TRW is also engraved into the back of the keyless entry remote).

According to the FCC, all remote controls with this FCC ID operate at 315.000mhz. My guess would be, most keyless entry systems built by this company operate at this frequency (ie, they don't all have separate FCC ID's, and separate frequencies).

It would only take me, an amateur radio operator, about an hour to come up with a way to block transmission on that frequency for, say, a 50 mile radius.

Go here to check your FCC ID.

The OEM remote control for my Chrysler Concord has FCCID GQ43VT9T. Which is registered to a company called TRW (TRW is also engraved into the back of the keyless entry remote).

According to the FCC, all remote controls with this FCC ID operate at 315.000mhz. My guess would be, most keyless entry systems built by this company operate at this frequency (ie, they don't all have separate FCC ID's, and separate frequencies).

It would only take me, an amateur radio operator, about an hour to come up with a way to block transmission on that frequency for, say, a 50 mile radius.

Go here to check your FCC ID.

My ATI/X10 RF remote uses 433.92 MHz as its frequency (according to an FCC ID search for B4SUR84A), so it shouldn't compete with any networks.

This remote has really spoiled me - it always works (as long as the batteries are good), regardless of where I aim it. The IR remote on my parents' digital tuner annoys me every time I use it now. If there's more than a 10 degree angle from the IR receiver, it won't receive the signal (possibly because of the glass window on the TV stand reflecting it).

Whatever happened to powerful IR remotes? I had an old IR remote for a Jerrold TV tuner in the 1980s. It took a 9-volt battery, but I could aim the thing at the wall or through my hand, and it would still work. It seems like each generation of IR remotes is getting progressively weaker.

You are exactly right (see #9), about toll free numbers anyway. The FCC does not permit it.

Does that mean it doesn't happen? No. It happens. But companies can be penalized for doing it.

And if you read the article in question, at least one Telco says that they have no problem with people transferring regular phone numbers. I know SBC allows it. I had a roommate several years ago, I moved out, and the phone was in my name. Roommate moved into a smaller apt, and I had the number transferred to her name and her new place, and SBC did it without any problems at all.

You are not "selling" the phone number per se, but you are selling the right to use that number, no different than a domain name.

For toll free numbers, it's a different game altogether because of FCC rules and concerns about number scarcity.