FCC Fails on First Attempt to Implement Amateur Radio License Fees
By: Kent Petty, KL5T, Chairman, Anchorage ARC VEC
Date Written: April 20, 2022
Seems like nothing ever goes off without a hitch.
The FCC indeed attempted to implement the new amateur radio license $35 filing fee on Tuesday, April 19. Unfortunately, we found out straight away that things were not working out as planned. We made our first application submissions on Tuesday morning (right after our Tuesday morning examination session). The files were “picked up” by the FCCs processing system, but, as luck would have it, that’s as far as things went. No files have actually been processed or licenses issued or upgraded by the FCC since implementation.
We did finally receive a message from the FCCs ULS EBF Team (Universal Licensing System Electronic Batch Filing) this morning (April 20, 2022) advising that the Electronic Batch filing system is currently down and for all VEC’s to refrain from uploading files while they work to resolve the issue. They advised that they would send us another communication when the system is back up.
So as it stands, we will continue our daily testing sessions but are holding the batch file submissions until told to submit by the FCC.
Hopefully more to follow soon
