Maritime Communications

The Commission has adopted a First Report and Order which provides an economically competitive and spectrally efficient maritime regulatory environment. Specifically, the Commission adopts amendments to its rules to reclassify international public coast stations as non- dominant common carriers, and allow certain private land mobile services that meet interference protection criteria to operate on public correspondence channels within the marine VHF band. These amendments were necessary in order to subject international public coast stations to a less burdensome regulatory scheme concerning tariff and closure procedures and to provide relief from private land mobile congestion within the VHF band.