Missouri Department of Public Safety Gets FCC Waiver

The FCC Public Safety Bureau granted the Missouri Department of Public Safety a waiver of a requirement under Section 90.559(b) of FCC rules, which mandates station identification be made on the lowest frequency utilized in a group of trunked channels. The department argued that it launched the Missouri Statewide Interoperability Network (MOSWIN) in 2012 prior to the adoption of the rule and it would be expensive and difficult to implement. “We agree with Missouri that it would be unduly burdensome to require MOSWIN user agencies to ‘reprogram their radios with new control channel lists’ solely to ensure that each base station in the system can use the lowest channel for [base station identification] rather than as a control channel,” the bureau said Thursday.