SB QST @ ARL $ARLB016
ARLB016 Vanity call sign application fee to rise

ZCZC AG16
QST de W1AW  
ARRL Bulletin 16  ARLB016
From ARRL Headquarters  
Newington CT  July 11, 2005
To all radio amateurs 

SB QST ARL ARLB016
ARLB016 Vanity call sign application fee to rise

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.

The February 2004 NPRM had estimated the FCC would receive 8000
vanity applications during FY 2005. The July 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 30 days after the R&O's publication in The
Federal Register--which hasn't happened yet.

More information on vanity call signs is available on the ARRL Web
site, www.arrl.org/arrlvec/vanity.html.
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