Canadian BETS Rules

One of the things I'm surprised no one has considered in the U.S. is obtaining something similar to RSS123 in Canada. That's a licensed service (but easy to get) that allows you to transmit on private property, a public place, or a strictly delimited area with up to 1 watt of power, as long as the field strength at the boundaries is 100uv or less.

Considering that the U.S. and Canada are going to be harmonizing white space device rules, now would be the time to attempt to harmonize unlicensed broadcasting rules, along with the equivalent of Canada's RSS123 (licensed private property broadcasting). I understand that this is not what is wanted, but in going for a lot right now, you might miss a golden window of opportunity to get a little. I don't think it would take nearly as much convincing for the FCC to adopt Canada's rules in those areas. Just something to think about.

Reply to Davidc(harmonization)

Ya, that would be good but wouldn't be good if it backfired and Canada adopted the part 15 rules!

@ Thelegacy, something that would be available to everyone not just in rural areas which would leave out the vast majority of people is to me a better plan. Just being a realist here....The corporations and the commercial stations will also have a say in this and they run the show you know. In a rural area a small radio station paying a lot for a licence and other expenses to be there may not like it if a hobbyer comes along with a 1 watt transmitter and a ground plane antenna and covered the same ground as them stealing the audience and paying nothing to be there.
Artisan has a good point...As the Rolling Stones said "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime you just might find you get what you need" In this case getting SOMETHING!


Mark

You may be surprised how perfect conditions must be for a 1 watt signal to reach over a mile. Some of our experiments were very disappointing. There is a major problem with some of these low gain antennas that are out there for FM transmitters even commercial ones. You would think that the antennas would be at least three db, 6 db 9 db anything better than zero db
but there are a lot of zeroed db antennas out there. One would think 1 Watt would be more than twice the range.

If 1 Watt was approved I'd get a 6 meter ham antenna one that has at least six to 10 DB gain then re cut it for FM. Then you would actually have some serious range. But what I can't understand is why even commercial stations have these crappy 0db antennas? Seems to me you get better range by using something different.

If commercial stations want to pay nothing for a license the answer is simple become a hobby radio station and set up multiple transfers throughout the city at lower power. Actually I think that idea is pretty good.

I sort of get what you're saying David but at the same time the service would be licensed it just means that it would be more like getting a gmrs license.

The FCC is in an illusion that it has control. When indeed it doesn't. Actually they're lucky that more people don't have these transmitters running around but at the same time I really think that they already know that something has to change.

I don't think realistically you're going to get 2 miles of City grade coverage with a 1 watt signal. The experiments that we have done so far has not shown that. So in order to get that type of coverage you would either have to do probably two things at the same time. One would be have an extremely high antenna like 90 to 100 foot up in the air. 2 the antenna would have to have massive amounts of gain. I just don't see that happening with Hobby Broadcasting with 1 watt.

As far as interference goes there seems to be very little possibility of that I'm not sure what the UVM is and how far that would be but you'd be surprised how little interference you would get.

Honestly one watt is not going to be a problem and that is proven by the other countries that are doing it. I suppose one could take a spectrum analyzer and show how far major interference would happen with one watt. I think the major fear is that the hobbyist is going to take away the listeners. The answer to that is it must mean that commercial stations really have poor programming and they know that they have poor programming and the only way to achieve the ratings they want is to kill the competition. That is a real unfair advantage sort of like back in the old days when there was only one phone company the Bell System. The FCC eventually had to break that company up I can honestly see this happening in radio broadcasting as well. Especially if we can show that there is a major Monopoly.

Any station can set up a plethora of transmitters from one end of town to another and legally broadcast. Just like they throw that in our face we could throw that in their face when they start talking about how much they have to pay and how little we have to pay. The point is that nobody should have to pay a huge fee to broadcast because the radio waves are the Public's radio waves. It should have been that in the beginning as it should be now but certain people made sure that they were able to put a strong hold on to it and choke off any type of competition especially a Hobby broadcaster. LPFM in many cases has already been set up for failure and the big boys know this.

When you argue for BETS-1 in the United States you cannot honestly say that it will stop piracy because it's not much more than the Present part 15 field strength. What would stop piracy is to be able to at least be able to transmit 2 miles to a car radio. At least then you have potential listeners. Even with that 2 miles though you're only talking City grade coverage for a little over a half mile.

I'm just looking at things from a realistic point of view. AM radio for those that have the ability to do it can transmit at least a mile sometimes two miles to a car radio. So asking for this for FM is not as unreasonable as you might think.

thelegacy said "As far as interference goes there seems to be very little possibility of that I'm not sure what the UVM is and how far that would be but you'd be surprised how little interference you would get."

I'm not sure how you can say that, when you haven't measured the field strength of 1 watt (or whatever) signals.

It's pretty easy to simulate these field strengths, however, and you'd be surprised how strong they would be in best case scenarios - that is what the FCC is going to look at, and not whether or not someone might be operating from an apartment.

I'd also like to bring this thread back on topic. Mark makes a good point, as the only country that allows 1 watt for unlicensed broadcasting has dedicated frequencies for that broadcasting. They don't share with licensed services, and they're expected to coordinate amongst themselves to resolve interference issues.

In Canada and the U.S., licensed broadcasters are protected from interference. So if an unlicensed service is to share frequencies with these broadcasters, there have to be limits placed on unlicensed signals to ensure no interference. Neither the FCC or Industry Canada have any control over where someone might install a transmitter, and I doubt they'll accept an honor system, given current pirate issues.

Industry Canada has determined that a 100uv signal is the determining factor for interference. That's why BETS-1 and RSS123 exist as they do. They limit BETS-1 (an unlicensed service) to 100uv/m at 30 meters. RSS123 - a licensed service - is limited to 100uv at property boundaries.

The FCC has rules in place that limit interference to licensed broadcasting - I don't remember what the level of an interfering signal has to be, but it's pretty low. The only way to determine if you are interfering is to measure your field strength. FCC Part 15 rules limit the field strength of an unlicensed signal to 250uv/m at 3 meters. Which is really saying that they want the field strength at around 8 meters or 25 feet to be 100uv (to bring it in line with Canada). They obviously want to absolutely, positively ensure no interference from that source.

A 1 watt signal is going to be tens of thousands of uv at current allowed ranges. Just saying that that level of field strength is going to have no impact on licensed broadcasters is not going to be good enough. I'm not even sure what kind of argument you can make that's going to hold water, unless you can get dedicated frequencies for unlicensed broadcasters.