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King Wants To Sell Out Ham Radio

Posted by timothy on from the ham-nation-indignation dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Rep. Peter King (R-NY), Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has introduced HR 607, the 'Broadband for First Responders Act of 2011,' which has been referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee (which handles telecommunications legislation). The bill would create a nationwide Public Safety broadband network using the so-called 'D-Block' of spectrum in the 700 MHz range for Public Safety use. But to pay for it, he wants to sell off 420-440 MHz, currently heavily used by the military, satellites and Amateur Radio operators."

2 of 309 comments (clear)

  1. Re:You'll miss them in a disaster by Illicon · · Score: 1, Troll

    it's almost unheard of for non-emergency hams to fail to vacate a frequency in favor of emergency users.

    Holy triple negative, Batman!

  2. Re:You'll miss them in a disaster by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 0, Troll

    They're everywhere. There are over 600,000 licensed amateur radio operators in the US. If you live in the US, odds are, a ham lives or works less than half a mile from you.

    Back when I was a kid and we got our TV via an aerial on the roof I certainly knew they were all around us - On some channels we could hear them calling CQ, blowing out whatever broadcast we were trying to watch. On other channels I'd be trying to watch Gilligan's Island, only to hear -.-. --.- over and over again, with the resulting TV static every time they pressed the morse key...