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To get one of the big things out of the way: bandwidth. The FCC don't want anyone taking up big chunks of spectrum without using a license or service appropriat
by chociej 5y ago
To get one of the big things out of the way: bandwidth. The FCC don't want anyone taking up big chunks of spectrum without using a license or service appropriate to that use. Notably, they don't want a few users to be able to chew up entire bands.
But there's a philosophical part to the discussion also. The tradeoff goes like this: hams get some really nice spectrum assignments, low fees, self-regulation, experimental modes and techniques, etc. In exchange, they can't use the amateur radio service commercially or for non-personal aims, and specifically they are expected to focus mostly on learning, community interaction, public service, experimentation, and so on. They also want amateur modes to be somewhat approachable, i.e. not requiring exotic or expensive hardware, necessarily.
Should an operator wish to use the radio spectrum for commercial or highly productive use, especially one requiring significant bandwidth, secrecy, exclusivity, etc, they are expected to use a different license / service more appropriate to those needs.
Basically:
Tinkering, chit-chat, community service, narrow bandwidths => amateur radio
Anything else => get a different license
To that end it was long the FCC's stance that high symbol rates sort of implied that you're going outside the purposes of the amateur radio service. With digital communication having developed as much as it has, though, it's reasonable that hams want to be able to do more interesting things with digital modes, which generally means higher symbol rates.
- madengr 5y agoI’m wondering if you could legalese around it since a PRN is a chip, not a symbol, as the former has no information. So one could spread a low symbol rate into a high chip rate.
- burnished 5y agoThanks for the additional context!
- leephillips 5y agoAn interesting twist to the regulations is that you're not allowed to use ham radio as a substitute for cell service. I never quite understood this rule, nor how it was to be enforced; but it would seem to place some limits on the permissible chit-chat. Also: no encryption.
- second--shift 5y agoI've heard this several times about ham radio, and to me as an outsider the idea of shared access to the medium is a bit off-putting to me. Is it possible to have two-way links "in the clear" but otherwise encoded or ciphered? Is there a regulation that says all transmissions must be in English, for example, or can I transmit in Esperanto/Navajo/hex?
- giantrobot 5y agoYou can speak whatever language you want on the air so long as you identify every ten minutes and at the end of your transmission. The ITU regulations for radio call signs cover their format however and use the Latin alphabet. Call books are also public so anyone can look up the stations and know who you are. Speaking in shorthand to be clear and concise over the radio is fine. Even using terms of art or abbreviations is likely fine. If you're explicitly coding your communication to obfuscate its meaning you're definitely going to run afoul on the ban of encryption. Part of the reason for no encryption on ham bands is there's precious little bandwidth available and unintelligible signals (intentionally obfuscated) are tantamount to interference. As a listener I can't reasonably tell if an encrypted signal is noise or a genuine call. I also can't reasonably receive a call sign so I can't know who is transmitting.
- userbinator 5y agoI wonder what they think of steganography, the elephant-in-the-room of all anti-encryption debates.
- second--shift 5y agoThis is basically my question.
- jandrese 5y agoThe big limitation is no encryption. So it's only a substitute for cell service if you're ok with being on a big party line with everybody else in the vicinity.