Garmin's General Mobile Radio Service Waiver Request Sees Opposition

The Arizona GMRS Repeater Club opposed Garmin International’s pursuit of a waiver of FCC rules to allow certification of hand-held general mobile radio service (GMRS) devices (see 2310060031). Midland Radio supported the waiver request (see 2402120059). “There are simply not enough [GMRS] frequencies available for the necessary separation between analog and digital transmissions,” the Arizona group said in a filing Monday in docket 24-7: “Our organization has suffered from interference to our GMRS repeater from commercial repeaters transmitting with [time-division multiple access] TDMA digital emissions. Digital transmissions can and do cause co-channel and adjacent channel interference to analog communications.” Other opposition came from a few amateur radio operators. “Digital data sounds are difficult to listen to and would be considered interference to the regular FM users,” amateur operator Jim Logue said. Noting “GMRS has very limited spectrum which is probably well utilized across the country,” he said he's "not sure there is room to introduce digital data.”