Barry, Thanks for the alert. I'm sure there will be comments from the field. Curious that other VECs received this and we did not. A short note about this on News and Events would be helpful, even if there are still open questions (which we can, of course, point out). As we know, in the absence of information, people make stuff up, and what they make up is always worse than the reality. 73, Greg, K0GW On Monday, July 10, 2017, Shelley, Barry, N1VXY <bshelley@arrl.org> wrote:
Good Afternoon:
This is just a message to inform you, in case you pick up some traffic from members or the field, that the FCC is changing the Form 605.
According to the recent e-mail from the FCC:
“We are providing notification that the form 605 will be changing on approximately August 3, 2017. The Commission is adding a basic qualifications section to the form which includes a question regarding whether an applicant has been convicted of a felony in any state or federal court. Applicants, answering yes must provide an explanation. This item enables the FCC to determine whether an Applicant is eligible under §§ 310(d) and 308(b) of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended, to hold or have ownership interest in a station license. This change makes the 605 consistent with other Commission licensing forms.”
Given that this information was transmitted via an e-mail to VECs (we didn’t get one from the FCC, but were provided a copy from another VEC) this came out of the clear blue. As you would suspect there are quite a number of detailed implementation questions we are attempting to resolve given the extremely short window between the announcement and the proposed, approximate implementation date. We are working with Chris Imlay to try and get answers to all our questions but to this point, the FCC, specifically Scot Stone, an FCC attorney in the Mobility Division, Wireless Bureau, has not provided any substantive guidance. Through Chris, we’ve asked to delay the actual implementation date to later in the year to give the VECs time to respond, change forms and update any batch processing software that will be required.
We will provide more information as it becomes available and will publish a short news item on the ARRL web site for the Amateur community.
73,
Barry J. Shelley, N1VXY
Chief Financial Officer
ARRL, Inc.
The National Association for Amateur Radio