I wonder how this compares to their previous statements and policies, because with a million people out of power and most communication systems offline, it does seem that charging people is just wrong, and the lack of the necessity of emergency communication provided by Amateurs was stated as a reason for them not exempting them from licensing fees.
>The FCC also disagreed with those who argued that amateur radio licensees should be exempt from fees because of their public service contribution during emergencies and disasters.
>“[W]e we are very much aware of these laudable and important services amateur radio licensees provide to the American public,” the FCC said, but noted that specific exemptions provided under Section 8 of the so-called “Ray Baum’s Act” requiring the FCC to assess the fees do not apply to amateur radio personal licenses. “Emergency communications, for example, are voluntary and are not required by our rules,” the FCC noted. “As we have noted previously, ‘[w]hile the value of the amateur service to the public as a voluntary noncommercial communications service, particularly with respect to providing emergency communications, is one of the underlying principles of the amateur service, the amateur service is not an emergency radio service.’” [0]
The point of the license is to make sure people are treating the spectrum well, not generate revenue. I will point out similar fees are assessed to get a license to operate a car which is probably more important in an emergency.
I hope you know that's not true. That database has a license and/or support fees regardless of how frequently it’s updated. Same for the OS. Then there’s the hardware it runs on. The backup software and associated costs, etc.
There’s absolutely no possible way the cost is $0 unless that database is entirely funded already.
The cost of the DB license itself isn't really attributable to any one service, while on the other hand, is MORE than covered by a single 5G spectrum auction.
Amateur licenses had application fees back in the day, and the FCC got rid of them ~10 years ago because the cost of administering just collecting the fee was more than it was worth.
In a way, it’s funded by the entities that actually need to pay for an FCC license (mainly commercial ones)… AFAIK, the FCC ULS (Universal Licensing System) is a unified database of all FCC licensees, regardless of type. If paying licensees can fund the database, then tacking on Amateur licenses to it is a marginal (if not effectively zero) cost.
But the aggregate cost to create and maintain that database is non-zero. That cost doesn’t scale at the same factor as licensees, but would still amortize to >$0.
>The FCC also disagreed with those who argued that amateur radio licensees should be exempt from fees because of their public service contribution during emergencies and disasters.
>“[W]e we are very much aware of these laudable and important services amateur radio licensees provide to the American public,” the FCC said, but noted that specific exemptions provided under Section 8 of the so-called “Ray Baum’s Act” requiring the FCC to assess the fees do not apply to amateur radio personal licenses. “Emergency communications, for example, are voluntary and are not required by our rules,” the FCC noted. “As we have noted previously, ‘[w]hile the value of the amateur service to the public as a voluntary noncommercial communications service, particularly with respect to providing emergency communications, is one of the underlying principles of the amateur service, the amateur service is not an emergency radio service.’” [0]
https://www.arrl.org/news/fcc-reduces-proposed-amateur-radio...