🚀 go-pugleaf

John Navas <spamfilter1@navasgroup.com> wrote in 
news:osk0561hjli19tfrgtu12b80anh8i5dj4r@4ax.com:

> A seemingly exasperated Jobs addressed the problem in a July 16 press
> conference. "When AT&T wants to add a cell tower in, oh, Texas or
> somewhere, it takes three weeks to get approval in a typical 
community.
> To get a cell phone tower in San Francisco, it takes something like
> three years," he said at the press event to discuss the iPhone 4's
> antenna issues two weeks ago.
> 
> 

I'm a ham radio operator and have been since I was 11 in 1957.  I 
currently hold an Amateur Radio Extra Class License from the FCC with 
all amateur radio priviledges.

Back in the 1980's every little fiefdom from the homeowner's association 
to the city to the county to the state were writing 
ordinances/regulations/laws that virtually said ham operators could only 
have antenna systems THEY approved, no matter if the amateur, who 
provides emergency communications in time of national disaster, could 
communicate with other amateurs or not.  They didn't care if your radio 
worked, they cared that noone could see any antenna, at all if they 
could get away with it.

Amateur Radio Relay League, our national ham radio organization that 
coordinates and lobbies and kisses the bureaucrats' asses to keep us on 
the air and keep commercial interests, like sellphone companies, from 
stealing our frequency bands we've had since 1900, with only partial 
success, objected to all this layer upon layer of local bureaucracy 
controlling what is a FEDERALLY licensed radio service into uselessness 
just to please the old lady next door, who blames the ham for every 
piece of failed electrical and electronic device she ever had.  ARRL 
turned to the FCC, our licensing agency, for some kind of preemptive 
Federal regulation that would put a stop to the ever-increasing 
restrictions driving us off the air in may places across the country.

After the usual long comment and lobbying period, FCC finally ruled in 
1985 with PRB-1, which you can read here:
http://wireless.fcc.gov/services/index.htm?job=prb-1&id=amateur&page=1

There are a few modifications to stop the locals from circumventing PRB-
1 over the years (links to them are on the right of the webpage) but 
PRB-1 has been most effective at putting a stop to our asshole neighbors 
banding together to force us off the air, rendering our emergency comms 
dead.

==============================Back to the topic======================

Now, if the FCC can do for ham radio to put a stop to all this 
restrictive bullshit of the local bureaucrats, because every cell tower 
IS an FCC Licensed radio service used for emergency communications in 
time of disaster, I'm convinced the FCC can simply COPY PRB-1 from part 
97, the Amateur Radio Rules......over to Part XX (I forget the number) 
The Cellular Phone Rules, as it is the SAME problem with the SAME local 
bureaucrats restricting the antenna structures of FCC Licensed Stations!

For this reason, I think we're all being fed a line of company BULLSHIT, 
to quote Penn & Teller.....

If the CTIA WANTED a PRB-1 from the FCC to cover every cell tower in the 
country, all the CTIA has to do is do the SAME thing the ARRL did.  
There's no reason why it cannot be done as the PRECIDENCE for this 
regulation has ALREADY been smoked out, fought out, and successfully 
been ajudicated by the ARRL and the amateur radio community, that guy 
down your street with the two 90' monster towers with big beam antennas 
you've all been blaming for everything for the last 30 years.  (You know 
who you are.)

Now, let's use our heads for a minute.  NO, silly, not THAT head!  Here 
we sit blaming the city, SF in this case, for NOT allowing ATT to put up 
a new tower in the middle of the Walmart parking lot.  ATT uses the city 
restrictive ordinances as the EXCUSE to you, to all of us, why the 
fucking tower has not been erected since 1988 to fill in the hole in 
their coverage in a less-than-very-profitable neighborhood around the 
Wally World.  YOU suck up and bluster that "it's those goddamned city 
politicians", getting ATTWS off the hook for installing another cell.  
They can blame the cities/neighborhoods/etc, FOREVER and won't have to 
expand their system to cover the area so your shitty iPhone 4 will make 
solid calls....FOREVER!

So, how 'bout it.  Do we wonder aloud why the sellphone carrier lobby 
hasn't gotten PRB-1 extended to include sellphone towers and 
systems....or do we just swallow this bullshit that everything wrong 
with the coverage is the "city's fault" all across the country?

FCC can wave that same magic wand and we can start FORCING the goddamned 
carriers to provide SMOOTH, SOLID service in areas they don't want to 
cover where profits are low and take away that "it's the city's fault" 
excuse you always get when you talk to them about the big hole on the 
way to work every day......It's ALREADY BEEN DONE by the Ham Radio 
Operators!

73 DE W4CSC
Charleston, SC.
If I can have a tower here.....ATTWS and VERIZON can have a tower here, 
dammit!


-- 
iPhone 4 is to cellular technology what the Titanic is to cruise ships.

Larry