From the ARRL 12/02/2020:
Amateur radio licensees and candidates will have to provide the FCC with an email address on applications, effective sometime in mid-2021. If no email address is included, the FCC may dismiss the application as defective.
The FCC is fully transitioning to electronic correspondence and will no longer print or provide wireless licensees with hard-copy authorizations or registrations by mail.
A Report and Order (R&O) on “Completing the Transition to Electronic Filing, Licenses and Authorizations, and Correspondence in the Wireless Radio Services” in WT Docket 19-212 was adopted on September 16. The new rules will go into effect 6 months after publication in the Federal Register, which hasn’t happened yet, but the FCC is already strongly encouraging applicants to provide an email address. When an email address is provided, licensees will receive an official electronic copy of their licenses when the application is granted.
Under Section 97.21 of the new rules, a person holding a valid amateur station license “must apply to the FCC for a modification of the license grant as necessary to show the correct mailing and email address, licensee name, club name, license trustee name, or license custodian name.” For a club or military recreation station license, the application must be presented in document form to a club station call sign administrator who must submit the information to the FCC in an electronic batch file.
Under new Section 97.23, each license will have to show the grantee’s correct name, mailing address, and email address. “The email address must be an address where the grantee can receive electronic correspondence,” the amended rule will state. “Revocation of the station license or suspension of the operator license may result when correspondence from the FCC is returned as undeliverable because the grantee failed to provide the correct email address.”
KC8WAU says
Maybe they’ll charge us $50 to update our licenses.
Dave New, N8SBE says
I’m glad I finally dropped GoDaddy as my email service provider after 15 years.
Over the past couple of years, GoDaddy started bouncing email from various sources, due to using a crowd-sourced DNS block list of ‘suspicious’ email content and/or addresses. GoDaddy seems content to just believe whatever is in that crowd-sourced database, and to heck with fixing any false positives.
The most annoying issue was to bounce dozens of messages over periods of a few days from various Groups.io mailing lists. When this happens, Groups.io will stop forwarding emails to your account without notice. Until you realize that you aren’t getting emails from some active mailing list, you end up missing stuff until you go back to your account at Groups.io and turn delivery back on. There is no way that I’ve found to force the missing emails to get re-sent, either. You just have to write down all the email IDs from the bounce list, and search for them one-by-one within Groups.io, so you can read them.
GoDaddy has gotten so big, that their IT folks hide behind a complex ticket system with auto-forms, that insist that I had to provide the original email from the bounced source (try convincing the admins at Groups.io that you need a copy of an email sent out by their outgoing server). And trying to talk to anyone at GoDaddy that wanted to help was an exercise in futility. Until/unless I could come with the ‘magic’ email, they refused to help, and kept closing my tickets. If you do a Google search on ‘GoDaddy bounced emails’, you will see there are lot of frustrated customers out there.
I was even getting text messages from Sprint, complaining that they had been unable to send me my last couple of emailed ebills, due to bounces from GoDaddy.
The last straw was when GoDaddy sent out a note last week telling all email customers that they were going to migrate them in 30 days from their unlimited IMAP business email accounts with web-based Workspace client, to Office 365 and Exchange, with 2 GB (?!) email boxes.
So, over the past weekend, I moved my GoDaddy IMAP account email and domain registration over to QTH.com. Scott, at QTH.com was very helpful, and I can say that I’m very satisfied with the results. And QTH.com supports two web-based clients, Horde and RoundCube. I found Horde very similar to GoDaddy’s Workspace, but with fewer bugs.
I am once again in control of my email, and hopefully, won’t get my license suspended or revoked due to bounced emails from the FCC.
Ronnie N. Boldon says
I have my ham ticket it is good till 2028 do I still have to give the FCC me e-mail address now or wait till renewing time
Dan KB6NU says
You can wait. This is only for new applications. When you renew, you’ll have to give them an email address, though.
Mick says
What if you don’t have email?
Dan KB6NU says
I guess you’ll just have to sign up for one.