(As Prepared for Delivery)


The Role of Amateur Radio in the New Century


Remarks by


Dale N. Hatfield (W0IFO)
Chief, Office on Engineering and Technology
Federal Communications Commission

at

AMRAD's 25th Anniversary Dinner
Falls Church, VA





June 17, 2000

Thank you very much for the nice introduction.  

I am very pleased to be able to speak to you this evening on the topic 
of the role of amateur radio in the new century.  I am very pleased to be here 
for a number of reasons.  

First, I am very pleased because it is both your 25th anniversary and 
your first anniversary dinner held in the new century.  That seems like a 
particularly good time to reflect on the future of the amateur radio service 
and I am flattered that you have asked me to do so.

Second, I am very pleased because I have especially fond thoughts 
about the service because of the pivotal role that amateur radio - and 
individual amateur operators -- hams -- played in my own career.  As I will 
explain in more detail in a moment, I would not be in my current position if 
it had not been for the help of some hams back when I was a teenager about 
50 years ago.

Third, I regard it as a particular honor to be asked to address an 
amateur radio group that emphasizes experimentation and the more technical 
aspects of amateur radio.  Again, as I will indicate in more detail in a few 
minutes, I believe that experimentation and contributions to the state of the 
art in the radio field are a major part of the justification for maintaining 
spectrum allocations for the service in the face of increased demands by 
commercial and other interests.

I would like to divide the remainder of my remarks into five parts.

? First, I will briefly -- very briefly -- talk about my personal involvement 
in amateur radio.

? Second, I will briefly describe the role of the Office on Engineering and 
Technology at the Federal Communications Commission so that you will 
have a better idea of the basis for my remarks.

? Third, speaking from that perspective, I will talk about the growing 
scarcity -- and hence economic value -- of the radio spectrum and how 
that growing scarcity will inevitably put pressure on amateur allocations. 
 
? Fourth, I will talk about the important role that the amateur radio service 
has played in the past and -- going to the basic topic I have been asked to 
address -- what the amateur service can do to in the future to justify its 
spectrum allocations on both a national and international basis.
   
? Fifth, and finally, I will talk about a proceeding we recently launched at 
the Commission - a proceeding dealing with Software Defined Radios. 

Before I continue, I need to add the standard disclaimer that my 
remarks here this evening represent my own views and they may not 
necessarily reflect the views of the Commission, any individual 
Commissioner, or any other staff member.

Background in Amateur Radio

	My own involvement in amateur radio began in my early teens, when 
my father bought me a used Hallicrafters S-38B shortwave receiver.  He and 
his brother -- my uncle -- had tinkered with crystal sets when they were kids 
and he somehow sensed that I might find radio interesting as well.  I 
connected that receiver to piece of antenna wire hung out of my bedroom 
window and soon I heard a ham radio operator in Morocco calling CQ in the 
20 meter amateur band.  From that moment I was hooked on radio 
communications.  

Two local hams who lived near me -- this was in Dayton, Ohio in the 
early 1950s -- helped me get my first license (WN8NGG) and helped me 
build my first transmitter.  These two hams were electrical engineers that 
were employed at Wright-Patterson Airforce Base near Dayton.  It was their 
interest that led me into electrical engineering as a vocation and ultimately to 
a job at the government's old Central Radio Propagation Laboratory in 
Boulder, Colorado.  I won't bore you with the details, but that first, entry-
level job eventually led me to the position I hold today.  Accordingly, I will 
forever be in the debt of those two hams who so unselfishly supported my 
passion for radio. 

Role of the Office of Engineering and Technology 

As most of you may know, the FCC is organized into Bureaus and 
Offices.  Generally speaking, the bureaus -- the Common Carrier Bureau, the 
Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, the Mass Media Bureau, the Cable 
Services Bureau, and the International Bureau -- have the "line" or operating 
responsibility in terms of the Commission's regulation of particular segments 
of the telecommunications industry.  For example, the Wireless 
Telecommunications Bureau -- under the excellent leadership of my 
colleague, Tom Sugrue -- has the responsibility for the Amateur Radio 
Service.  The offices -- such as the Office of the General Counsel and the 
Office of Plans and Policy -- provide support and advice to the operating 
bureaus and to the five member Commission itself.  

Reflecting that rough division, the office that I now head, the Office 
of Engineering and Technology, provides technical advice to other bureaus 
and offices and to the Chairman and other Commissioners.  In addition, 
however, our office has the responsibility for administering specific parts of 
the Commission's rules, namely, Parts 2, 5, 15, and 18.  Part 2 of the rules 
contains the Table of Frequency Allocations.  That is, while the individual 
bureaus have primary responsibility for developing and recommending 
specific service rules, we, in OET, have the responsibility for general 
allocation matters.  We also issue experimental licenses under Part 5 of the 
Commission's rules.  In addition, we administer Part 15 of the Commission's 
rules dealing with unlicensed devices as well as Part 18, which deals with 
certain industrial, scientific and medical equipment.  Finally, we are 
responsible for the Commission's equipment authorization program.  Much 
of that work is done at our laboratory facilities in Laurel, Maryland.

Growing Demand for Spectrum

	The management of the radio spectrum resource is an extremely 
important part of telecommunications policy and regulation.  As you all 
know so well, radio spectrum is an increasingly scarce natural resource.  We 
simply do not have enough spectrum to give everyone all they want.  This 
increasing demand is being propelled by a host of developments:

? the growing shift of our economy towards the service sector, 

? the increasing mobility of our workforce, 

? the convenience and increased efficiency produced by mobile/portable 
communications

? the increasing performance and falling cost of wireless devices

? the increasing requirements for public safety and for national defense 
systems, and 

? the dramatically growing interest in accessing the Internet on a wireless 
basis. 

	Hence, the allocation of spectrum for particular uses and the 
development of specific technical and service rules governing those 
allocations is a crucial determinant of telecommunications industry structure 
and performance.  Even more importantly, it is critical to the performance of 
our public institutions that are devoted to certain scientific pursuits, such as 
radio astronomy, to the safety of life and property, and to the national 
defense.

	As the office at the Commission that has primary responsibility for 
spectrum allocation matters, we, in OET, are in a particularly good spot to 
judge -- first hand -- the increasing demand for spectrum.  Our office is 
generally the first place people stop when they are seeking new spectrum.  
Hardly a week goes by without someone stopping in my office or filing a 
petition asking that spectrum be allocated for some new service or that 
additional spectrum be allocated to an existing service.  While increased 
efficiency in the use of spectrum -- through the use of digital compression 
techniques, more efficient modulation and greater frequency reuse, for 
example -- can offset some of this increased demand, increased scarcity is a 
very real concern.  This scarcity is exemplified by increasingly contentious 
debates over spectrum sharing arrangements and by the amounts bid in 
auctions for radio licenses.  The $35 billion bid in the recent Third 
Generation Cellular auctions in the United Kingdom provides very clear 
evidence of the increasing value of spectrum.

Our Chairman -- FCC Chairman, Bill Kennard -- has recently called 
attention to the potential for a "spectrum drought", especially in the valuable 
range below about 3 GHz.  Under the leadership of the Chairman, and with 
solid support of Commissioner Susan Ness -- who has always been intensely 
interested in spectrum issues, we have put forth a number of proposals and 
undertaken a number of initiatives that would allow more uses and users of 
this national and international resource.  One of these initiatives relates to 
Software Defined Radios -- a topic which I will return to briefly near the end 
of my remarks.  The point that I want to emphasize here, however, is that, in 
thinking about the role of Amateur Radio in the new century, we must think 
about it in the context of increasing pressure on the underlying spectrum 
resource.

Future of the Amateur Service

	Turning now to the future, it seems to me that - given the increased 
pressure on the underlying resource from commercial and other non-
commercial uses -- the key issue for the amateur service is maintaining 
access to an adequate amount of spectrum.  Let me make it absolutely clear 
that, in raising the spectrum issue, I am not suggesting that there is any 
immediate threat to existing amateur allocations.  I am simply pointing out 
the reality of the situation.  The rapidly growing demand for spectrum 
coupled with the increased visibility of its economic value due to auctions 
makes it almost inevitable that amateurs will be under a certain amount of 
pressure to justify their "free" use of this precious resource.

In the past, the amateur service has justified its spectrum allocations 
by, among other ways, (1) engaging in experimentation that has advanced 
the radio state-of-the-art, (2) providing emergency communications in times 
of natural or man-made disasters, (3) providing trained radio operators in 
times of national emergencies, (4) encouraging international cooperation and 
goodwill by allowing direct communications between and among people on 
an international basis and (5) as in my case, providing an important 
educational outlet for people interested in the more technical aspects of radio 
communications.  While the relative importance of some of these ways has 
obviously changed because of marketplace, technological and other 
developments, they remain valid today.  The important thing is that they 
actually be carried out.  Or, to use a bit of slang, it seems to me that it will be 
even more important for all segments of the amateur community to "walk 
the walk" not just "talk the talk."

	Another potentially important area deals with how efficiently one uses 
the spectrum.  We could probably discuss at some length the proper measure 
of spectrum efficiency but for our purposes here this evening it might be 
simply the number of simultaneous conversations that can be accommodated 
in a given amount of spectrum in a particular geographic area.  In the 
commercial sectors, where organizations pay for their use of the spectrum, 
there is a significant economic incentive to use the resource efficiently - to 
spread costs over as many users as possible while maintaining good quality 
service.  That is, there is a strong incentive to develop and adopt more 
spectrally efficient technology.  For example, by adopting various digital 
techniques, commercial mobile radio service providers (e.g., cellular and 
PCS) have been able to dramatically increase their capacity compared to the 
original analog technology.  Similarly, when the broadcast industry has 
completed its transition to digital television, we will be able to reclaim a 
substantial amount of spectrum for other uses.  

I recognize that, in the past, hams have also adopted more spectrally 
efficient technologies - for example, by migrating from double-sideband 
amplitude modulation to single-sideband modulation and, more recently, by 
shifting to more efficient modulation for text - TTY - modes.  I would urge 
you to continue shifting towards more spectrally efficient communications 
techniques - especially digital techniques.  Such a shift has a number of 
benefits:

? First of all, it demonstrates to policymakers and regulators that you are 
good stewards of the public's airwaves even without direct economic 
incentives.

? Second, by using what you have efficiently, it strengthens your case 
when you need to ask for additional spectrum.

? Third, by allowing more users to access the available allocations 
simultaneously, it improves the amateur experience and ultimately 
increases the attractiveness of the service to new and old users alike. 

? Fourth, it provides the opportunity or "headroom" for increases in data 
rates to more closely match those available on wireline networks and, in 
the future, on commercial wireless networks as well.

? Fifth, as the rest of the telecommunications world makes the transition to 
digital techniques - and there are very few exceptions to that trend - the 
amateur service will look antiquated if it is not making progress in that 
direction as well.

So looking to the future of the amateur radio service in the new 
century, I would urge you to continue your traditional role in public service 
by being prepared for and providing communications in times of 
emergencies, conducting experiments, providing training in radio 
communications, and encouraging international comity.  But I would also 
urge you to focus particular attention -- for the reasons I just mentioned -- on 
experimentation with digital techniques that are capable of squeezing more 
"bits per second per Hertz of bandwidth" out of the increasingly valuable 
radio spectrum resource.

Software Defined Radios

I am rapidly running out of time but before I close I would like to talk 
about one additional topic that, as it turns out, may help enable some of the 
experimentation with digital techniques that I just advocated.  The topic, as I 
mentioned at the outset of my remarks, is Software Defined Radios. 
Software defined radios -- or software radios or software programmable 
radios as they are sometimes called -- can be described as radios that are 
implemented in digital signal processors with functions defined in software. 
In other words the signals are generated in -- or converted to -- the digital 
format and the necessary processing -- for example, modulation and 
demodulation -- is done in software on a common platform.  

	From what I have been told, such radios could have a host of 
advantages:

?One, they would allow a common radio to accommodate a host of 
different standards and thereby help alleviate some of the problems that we 
have had with the creation of different standards in the wireless field.

?Two, they would facilitate interoperability among different types of 
radio systems, when for example, a large number of different emergency 
groups arrive at the scene of a major disaster.

?Three, they would allow a manufacturer to develop different radios 
but on a common hardware platform.  In other words, rather than 
manufacture and carry in inventory several different radios, the 
manufacturer could achieve economies of scale in the production of a 
common hardware platform, but wait until the product is about to be shipped 
before loading the software to create a specific type of device.

?Four, they would allow the end user to update his or her radio 
simply by getting a software update -- just like an end user gets updated 
software for a Personal Computer today.  In fact, one could even envision a 
situation where one could get software updates right off of the Internet or 
over-the-air.

?Five, it is possible that a manufacturer could sell a bare-bones 
hardware platform to which third party providers or end users - including 
hams -- could supply software to create custom radio systems.  Certainly we 
have seen similar developments in the computer field and in other sectors of 
the telecommunications industry.

?Six, it is even possible to imagine a radio that could adapt its 
characteristics to fit the interference environment and user needs on a more-
or-less real time basis.  For example, the radio could maximize its use of 
bandwidth in areas where the spectrum is not congested while conserving 
bandwidth or going to more robust modulation in areas where interference is 
heavy and/or propagation conditions are particularly difficult.

Indeed, if we can solve some of the difficult regulatory issues 
involved, it is even possible to envision Software Defined Radios as a means 
of facilitating a new era of amateur experimentation.  One intriguing 
possibility is that it could enable hams without skills and/or interest in 
hardware construction to build and experiment with new systems by writing 
new code.  It might also allow the rapid sharing of new modulation 
techniques and receiver designs through electronic publication of the 
implementing software.  This could stimulate a whole new generation of 
amateur innovation that not only includes the more spectrally efficient 
systems I mentioned earlier, but also radios that could adapt to their 
environment as well.

In many ways, Software Defined Radios represent a final merger of 
the radio communications and computer fields. Viewed from that 
perspective, this technological development even has the potential of 
attracting back to the hobby some of the people who have shifted their 
interest to computer technology. Because of this potential to advance the 
service in fundamental ways, I would urge amateur groups to participate 
actively in our proceeding.

Concluding Thoughts

	Let me conclude by saying that I believe that the future of the amateur 
service is a bright one.  It is one where technological advances such as 
Software Defined Radios can enable the ham community to continue its 
proud tradition of innovation while demonstrating its commitment to the 
efficient use of the spectrum resource.  Certainly your organization - 
AMRAD - is in a particular good position to encourage the experimentation 
that will lead to such innovations and I strongly commend you for your 
leadership efforts in that direction in the past.

Thank you very much.
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