Vanity Processing to Resume this Week!

NEWINGTON, CT, Mar 5, 2002--The FCC now has all outstanding vanity applications initially filed last October in hand and is ready to resume routine vanity call sign processing, a spokesperson said. Until this week, a single missing vanity application had been holding up a backlog of more than 2000 vanity applications. The holdup has been a source of growing irritation within the amateur community.

"With the help of ARRL, the problem has been resolved, and we will begin processing vanity applications this week," an FCC spokesperson at the FCC's Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, office said today. "So as not to overload the system, we will run batches of applications daily until amateur vanity processing is again up to date." FCC efforts, assisted by the ARRL, to contact the lone elusive applicant to have the individual resubmit a vanity application proved extremely frustrating. Contact finally was made with the applicant this week, however, and a reconstructed paper application was faxed to the FCC in Gettysburg.

At the core of the problem were some two weeks' worth of October paper vanity applications that were sent from Gettysburg to Washington, DC, last fall for anthrax decontamination but never made it back to Gettysburg. FCC Wireless Telecommunications Bureau personnel at Gettysburg were successful in using information gleaned from payment receipts to contact most of the known paper filers via e-mail or telephone to have them resubmit copies of their vanity applications. As a result, a few vanity call signs have trickled out of Gettysburg in recent weeks. On February 27 and 28, the FCC processed a total of 74 vanity applications received last October 23-26. Prior to last week, no amateur vanity call signs had been granted since February 1, and until late January, no vanity call signs had been issued since October 30.

Although the majority of vanity applications are filed electronically, the FCC's policy is to give equal processing weight to paper and electronic applications.

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