With the breaking news reports that the US Senate may have reached a deal, there's a possibility that the FCC may reopen on Thursday, October 17.
If this does happen, let me tell you what will be next from the perspective of REC Networks.
REC will be working with our allies to reach out to the FCC to ask for a slight delay of the LPFM filing window. If the government was to open on Thursday, we would be into day-3 of the filing window. Other filings that were due to the Commission between October 1 and October 17 would be due either on Friday or Monday based on what time of the day the FCC reopens for business. During the time the government has been shutdown, prospective applicants were unable to access the FCC Channel Finder, the HAAT tool, the field strength CURVES tool, TOWAIR, AM Query to search for nearby AM stations (part 1 subpart AA compliance) as well as NOAA's NADCON tool to assure accurate geographic coordinates on applications. In addition, prospective applicants have not been able to "stage" their applications in the FCC's system.
REC's priorities at government recovery will be as follows:
- First, we will work to restore our systems to their full capability. REC has made some software changes since the government shutdown and we will first need to test these changes against the live FCC and US Census Bureau data. We estimate that after a few hours following FCC systems restoral, we will activate the full functionality in myLPFM.
- Also first in priority is working with our allies to reach out to the FCC in regards to the future of the LPFM filing window as described above.
- Second, we will work on delivering REC LPFM Premium Channel Reports to our remaining customers who have already paid for their reports and have not received them as a result of the shutdown.
- Third, we will be auditing existing channel reports to assure that these reports do not contain any flaws that could jeopardize the grant of their application.
- Finally, if there is still ample time between the day of recovery and a rescheduled LPFM filing window, we will accept new customers for LPFM Premium Channel Searches.
For now, we will be patient as we get ready to react to the recovery.
Respectfully,
Michi Eyre Bradley
founder, REC Networks
Media inquiries only: (202)621-2355.
