Soon, it won’t cost a dime to get a vanity callsign. This according to the FCC’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Report and Order, and Order, MD Docket 14-92 and others, released May 21. Notice that this is a notice of proposed rulemaking. The fee won’t actually be eliminated until Congress is notified of the change. That will take at least 90 days.
“The Commission spends more resources on processing the regulatory fees and issuing refunds than the amount of the regulatory fee payment,” the FCC said. “As our costs now exceed the regulatory fee, we are eliminating this regulatory fee category.”
Personally, I don’t care if there’s a fee or not. I certainly won’t be applying for one anytime soon, if ever. What I don’t understand, though, is if the fee is not covering their costs, why don’t they increase the fee or reduce their processing costs somehow?
Like the recent news about the FCC plan to shrink its enforcement bureau, this sounds like the FCC is just giving up.