So I picked up a pair of these nifty wristwatch walkie-talkies when browsing Fry’s Electronics. Super cheap, and they work as advertised with about a 1-mile range. They’ll be great for camping, hiking, geocaching — though my wife plans to use them as an intercom, so she can page me to come out of my basement music studio!
The strange thing about them that caught my eye in the instructions is the manufacturer’s warning: of the 22 radio channels they can use, 14 of them are freely usable, but the upper 8 channels “require an FCC license” to use. So I googled around for a bit, and discovered this bile-filled FAQ page telling me that I’m a radio pirate, and that I need to buy an $80 FCC license to use the device at all.
After spending an hour or two reading the FAQ and FCC websites, here’s my take on the situation.
Once upon a time, the FCC created something called General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS), which allowed individuals/families to create local radio networks for private use over a few-mile range. It required a license and radio call-letters to use, and was restricted to 8 frequencies. Then Radio Shack came along and propsed a new standard called “Family Radio System” (FRS), which was much lower power (half a watt, instead of 5 watts), and used 14 frequencies that lay between the GMRS frequencies. The FCC approved the standard, saying that that certified FRS radios didn’t require a license. Then, some evil electronics companies started marketing some super-cheap radios branded as “hybrid” FRS/GMRS: they could transmit on all 22 frequencies. The instructions said nothing about license requirements, and suddenly thousands of people were accidentally using GMRS without FCC licenses. The angry FAQ calls these people “bubble pack pirates”, referring to the packaging the cheap hybrid radios come in.
Well, as you can imagine, this phenomenon has greatly angered all the law-abiding radio enthusiasts. The FCC has been blindsided, and is too busy scanning airwaves (hunting terrorists) to bother to slap the hands all these accidental violations. As a result, the true radio hobbyists have turned into a self-righteous vigilante force. They patrol local GMRS networks, demanding people present their licensed call-signs. When they discover accidental pirates, they send them to the FAQ page and try to persuade them that they need to buy an FCC license.
The thing is, I don’t think their argument holds any water.
There’s no doubt that the FCC is a good and useful thing. The spectrum is a shared, scarce resource, and without FCC regulation it would be absolute anarchy. Whoever had the most electricity (i.e. big corporations) would dominate all airwaves. So the FCC intelligently requires people to license parts of the spectrum when the transmission signal is strong enough to interfere with others’ activities. But what I think we’re seeing in that angry FAQ is a bunch of radio hobbyists feeling cheated: “I had to pay $80 to use these frequencies, and now the rules changed, wahhh, it’s not fair.”
The hobbyists are arguing to the letter of the law, rather than the spirit. They claim that the FCC officially recognizes FRS radios and GMRS radios, but that it does not recognize hybrid radios capable of both. The law says that only 100% pure FRS radios are license-free, and therefore, they argue, anything else must require a license. In other words, simply because my device is capable of using GMRS, I have to buy a license. Sounds like a bunch of baloney to me, or perhaps sour grapes. It’s like arguing that if I don’t have a driver’s license, I’m not allowed to own a car. Sure, it would be illegal for me to drive the car, but it’s not illegal to own it and let it sit in my driveway. Likewise, I own a radio which is (questionably) able to broadcast on GMRS. If I don’t use that feature, I’m not breaking any law. (I say “questionably”, because my radio only outputs .3 watts, which is well below the .5 watt FRS maximum, and far below the 1 watt GMRS radio standard.)
The point is, I have an FRS radio that conforms to definition (and spirit) of the FRS law: it transmits extremely weakly, and on the correct free frequencies. As long as I avoid the GMRS frequencies, I’m not interfering with anyone else or breaking licensing laws. The hobbyists are angry at the hybrid-radio manufacturers for making it easy to accidentally break the law, but arguing that “the law doesn’t explicitly recognize these devices, thus you need a license” is extremely weak. I’d like to see what a court says about it.
The whole thing reminds me of the commercialization of the internet. In olden days, only elite computer hobbyists knew what email was, or how to have conversations on Usenet. When the net exploded in the mid-90’s, the old-timers got really irritated at the the influx of clueless newbies flooding the discussion boards. Sorry, that’s just how it goes.