Vanity Call Sign Application Fee to Rise

NEWINGTON, CT, July 8, 2005--The regulatory fee to apply for an Amateur Radio vanity call sign will go up slightly later this year, an FCC Order indicates. A Report and Order and Order On Reconsideration (R&O) in the assessment and collection of regulatory fees for fiscal years 2004 and 2005 released July 7 increases the fee for FY 2005 to $21.90 for the 10-year license term. The FCC said it had adjusted FY 2004 "payment units" for each service to better reflect expected FY 2005 payment liabilities.

"We tied to obtain verification for these estimates from multiple sources and, in all cases, we compared FY 2005 estimates with actual FY 2004 payment units to ensure that our revised estimates were reasonable," the FCC said in the R&O. "Where appropriate, we adjusted and/or rounded our final estimates to take into consideration the fact that certain variables that impact on the number of payment units cannot be estimated exactly."

In a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) in the proceeding last February, the Commission had proposed keeping the vanity call sign fee at its current $20.80. The fee rose from $16.30 to $20.80 last August. A reevaluation in the number of anticipated vanity call sign applications--or "payment units"--accounts for the latest fee hike.

In its February 2004 NPRM, the Commission had estimated it would receive 8000 vanity applications during FY 2005. This month's R&O reflects a downward recalculation to an anticipated 7600 vanity applications--up only slightly from a year earlier--so the fee had to be raised to meet FY 2005 revenue requirements of $166,443.

The FCC hopes to collect a total of more than $280 million in regulatory fees for fiscal year 2005, as mandated by Congress "to recover the regulatory costs associated with the Commission's enforcement, policy and rulemaking, user information, and international activities."

While the R&O does not specify the effective date of the change, this generally occurs soon after the Order is released--typically 30 days after the R&O's publication in The Federal Register, which hasn't happened yet.

In a separate statement attached to the R&O, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said he remained "troubled" with the Commission's inability to consider changes that occur from time to time in the costs of regulatory fees for individual services. "I encourage the Commission to continue to improve its regulatory fee assessment processes so that in the future we are more able to make these adjustments as appropriate," he said.

Also in a separate statement, the Commission's only other Democrat, Michael Copps, said the FCC should consider initiating a proceeding to address when or how it would adjust the regulatory fees pursuant to the Communications Act of 1934. "As technology advances and our regulatory activities change, we must continue to look for ways to improve our regulatory fee methodology to ensure that we continue to comply fully with the Act's requirements," he said.

More information on vanity call signs is available on the ARRL Web site.

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