Posted by: Dan K2UL on September 26, 2000 at 11:27:39:
OK, gang, I asked Bill Cross what he thought. His reply is below. In short, he says that the congressional act/statute says the fee is for "usage", not for the initial application. Therefore, it applies to all license terms, new and renewals, regardless of how you interpret the wording on the new FCC form.
The first vanity renewals won't come due until 2006, and Bill holds one of those, so hopefully he will let us know if he paid or not. Of course, the statute might be officially changed by congress in the next 6 years. Who knows?
Dan
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News to me. As far as I know, the statute is what determines what the fees are and how they are charged. The vanity call
sign fee is listed under regulatory fees and is for the "use of a vanity call sign". Application fees are a different
section of the Act. Renewal of a license starts a new 10 year term using the vanity call sign.
As I recall, the ARRL observed that unless the Act was changed by Congress, the fee would apply again at renewal, and it
was working to have the Act changed because once the vanity call sign was issued, the process of renewing it is exactly the
same as that of renewing a sequentially issued call sign. I also haven't seen anything that has changed the Act in this
regard.
Bill