Talk:Low-power broadcasting

NPOV
Is anyone watching this page? Does anyone want to help put up more information on the micro-power movement on this page or on another page? ParkingStones 22:21, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I have done some editing here. I think the article is still pretty weak, but I think the issue is a reasonably important one, so let's not kill the page yet. I haven't looked at the other Radio and broadcasting pages yet. That might be another place to find this info a better home. Has anyone else even looked at this page? --Jvv62 00:49, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

After looking at a few other pages, this particular grouping of items might not be necessary. Perhaps the community Radio, School radio, and radio regulation pages are where this all belongs. On the other hand, LP does have a unique blend of technical, financial, ad political problems, so maybe this should be here.


 * This page was clearly written by someone on one side of the LPFM issue. I am mostly on that side too, so it's a little hard for me to completely straighten it out.  \" This is due to the influence of NPR and religious broadcasting companies,\"  Actually I think it's a little more nuaced than that.

-- Jvv62 02:11, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I believe there have been some developments with this. The Mitre Report Was conducted in 2003 and its findings have an impact on this issue.

Also the Local Community Radio Act of 2005 was introduced but failed due to opposition from the National Association of Broadcasters. I am in the process of finding a paper trail for this.

Recently the Local Community Radio Act of 2007 was introduced and is under consideration. I am also in the process of running this back but the act can be found here

If some of the political view points are boiled down to just verifiable facts of the history of this it would go a long was in getting this thing into a non biased view. Iscariot40 16:57, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Neutral? Nope. If you can consider PIRATE (meaning illegal and deliberately so) stations as simply innocuous "microbroadcasters" I guess it's neutral... don't get me wrong, I like those Prometheus guys (and gals - sorry Hannah) and support them but let's not start this whitewashing - if you're handing out credit for LPFM you ought to include (among others) other pirates like Stephen Dunifer (but failure to divulge their lawbreaking does make for a non-neutral article). Low power broadcasting is way more than 15 years old! In fact, where's an article (or mention) on the big force in low power broadcasting (once upon a time) a company started in 1960 called "Low Power Broadcasting" (now LPB Communications, Inc.) which really did explode this movement building tens of thousands of school stations and developing some of the more interesting technologies, supplying a global market in community radio? But I digress. The reason I found this article was that I was looking for a catchall that included low power systems such as 'tunnel broadcasting', 'language translation', hearing assistive', educational, community, commercial and others. This article hides those as after thoughts at best in favor (clearly) of LPFM. So, this should be an LPFM article linked from a more broad-scoped "low power broadcasting" article. If everyone wants this current article to stay I can start filling in large amounts of niche systems that are low power broadcasting, I just did some light adds, but I'll wait and see if this is going to move or something. BTW - historically the NPR/religious broadcasters support of translators is accurate. They operate a hugely dominant % of the systems and have been abusers of the application process repeatedly (primarily since the FCC allowed satellite-fed translator operations). I can provide LOTS of examples, but its bad enough the FCC is re-evaluating the process according to a recent release.--Wloyradio (talk) 03:58, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

AFD on manufacturer Alice Soundtech
There's an AFD on Alice Soundtech, a leading UK supplier of studio and transmission equipment for RSL radio stations, from mixing consoles to AM/FM transmitters, based in Surrey. People in the biz or in the know can chime in at Articles for deletion/Alice Soundtech. -- 62.147.86.249 16:53, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Lists of stations
The External Links section is becoming cluttered with station links. Perhaps it's time for a List of LPFM stations, List of LPAM stations, etc (either with headings for countries, etc, or separate articles, bound with a category). —überRegenbogen (talk) 13:40, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
 * There should be a list/category for LPFM as it is a FCC broadcast class, but LPAM doesn't exist in the FCC eyes, they call it Part 15 and those don't pass WP:N. Mr mark taylor (talk) 16:58, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I bag to differ. LPFM is very much a broadcast class that is licensed and authorized by the FCC.  One can not legally operation a true LPFM station without a license.  Part 15 is much different; think the likes of an FM transmitter on a XM Radio receiver. Radiojonathan (talk) 04:54, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
 * He wrote LPAM not LPFM. Please read more carefully

Lots of Incorrect Information
There is a huge difference in a LPFM station and a translator. A translator station retransmits the signal of a full power station to another area, while LPFM must have all original programming and also must be non-profit. To say that the likes of Calvary and K-Love are operating and taking up LPFM allocations is extremely misleading and inaccurate. I will do somemore research on specifics and update as I am able. In the mean time please be careful when reading this page, as it does contain a lot of incorrect information. I might also suggest that, if the original auhor is registered, that he be blocked from updating this page. Obviously he/she has no idea what he/she is talking about. Radiojonathan (talk) 04:51, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

The statement under the heading "Foundation of LPFM" that the minimium power for a commerical FM station is 6000 watts is simply false. 6000 watts is the maximum permitted effective radiated power (ERP) for the lowest class of full-power FM stations (Class A). Many Class A stations operate well under 6kW ERP; for example, KFAI in Minneapolis currently operates with 900W ERP and formerly used just 125W ERP. A number of other factual misrepresentations are present in this article, though I don't have sufficient time to address them at the moment. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.135.241.45 (talk) 17:04, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

smart radio
Most of this article discusses radio broadcast using standard analog AM, analog FM, or analog TV modulation, with the only difference being reduced power and range ... and the various legal regulations involved.

The "Merged from low-power" section seems to talk about something entirely different -- "smart radio" communication from one end of a city to another, not using a direct broadcast, nor using standard cell system ( mobile-to-tower-to-landline-to-tower-to-mobile ), but through a series of relay stations that all use much lower power than it would take to directly communicate from one end of a city to the other. And as far as I can tell, using some sort of packet-switched digital modulation.

While certainly both things involve "radio" at "low power", that (as far as I can tell) seems to be the only thing they have in common. Something that meets this "smart radio" definition does not necessarily meet the FCC legal definition of "low power", and something that meets the FCC legal definition of "low power" probably does not have this "smart radio" architecture.

So ... should we continue to make this article talk about all kinds of "relatively low power" radio transmission, covering both the physics involved, the various arrangements (one-way one-to-many broadcast, 2-way one-to-one communication, mesh communication, etc.), briefly mentioning the various protocols (AM, FM, frequency hoppping, etc), as well as various legal requirements?

Or should split this up into one article that discusses various legal requirements (preferably using the official name in those laws -- which is what?), and another article that discusses the physics involved and the tradeoffs of various arrangements and protocols?

Or should we move all the smart radio stuff to the wireless mesh network article -- it's roughly the same, right? --68.0.124.33 (talk) 06:35, 28 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The "smart radio" section has been moved from this article to cognitive radio. --DavidCary (talk) 14:10, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Opinions Section
Smart radio ideas would be a natural jumping off point for cognitive radio, and other topics.

Low-power broadcasting done with digital technology would allow for much more efficient use of bandwidth, and would help in distributing content to a local community of interest, much like the Boston COMINS project at MIT did in the 1980s.

Wikip rhyre (talk) 22:00, 9 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree that those are all important and notable topics that should be included somewhere in Wikipedia.
 * However, other people seem to feel that this "low-power broadcasting" article needs to focus on one particular legal definition of "low-power broadcasting" that excludes most of those topics.
 * Is there some other article that would be more appropriate for describing of "low-power broadcasting done with digital technology" in general? A general article about the commonalities between Boston COMINS, QRP operation, Wireless community network, ZigBee, etc.? If I understand correctly, none of those things meet the legal definition of "low-power broadcasting" described in this article. --DavidCary (talk) 19:09, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

February 2013 cleaning
I went through and attempted some cleanup of this article, mostly through the Low-power broadcasting section. Major changes made: This is just a portion of the problems. This article has been tagged as needed more references for 2 years now, and for needing POV-checking for over 5 years, so anything that has existed unsourced or added to the problem since then is ripe for removal without further reason. --Closeapple (talk) 10:05, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Removed most of the second paragraph, which was an unsourced general explanation that reception distance is a factor of weather, terrain, and transmitter power.
 * Reduced lecturing from remainder of introduction section.
 * Sorted the sections by country.
 * Removed repeated, unsourced claims that U.S. LPFM and Class D licenses have been stopped by the government because of the unspecified "influence" of National Public Radio and religious broadcasting. (If it's verifiable, reliable sources can be found.)
 * Removed the entire "Smart radio" section, as it consisted only of two see-alsos (cognitive radio and wireless mesh network) followed by advocacy quotes that did not contain the term, with no explanation of the term in-between or even evidence that the term "smart radio" is in normal circulation.
 * Added lots of inline maintenance tags, so editors can see more precisely what needs to be improved or removed.

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080409100247/http://www.mediaaccess.org/programs/lpfm/RADIOmagazine.pdf to http://www.mediaaccess.org/programs/lpfm/RADIOmagazine.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20081012040159/http://www.mediaaccess.org/programs/lpfm/RADIOmagazine.pdf to http://www.mediaaccess.org/programs/lpfm/RADIOmagazine.pdf

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External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110525090155/http://www.current.org/tech/tech0314lpfm.html to http://www.current.org/tech/tech0314lpfm.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060715120701/http://www.digitalsyndicate.net/part15.html to http://www.digitalsyndicate.net/part15.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070403054557/http://www.rsm.govt.nz/licensing/gurls/gurl-lpfmbc-2.html to http://www.rsm.govt.nz/licensing/gurls/gurl-lpfmbc-2.html

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U.S. section merits its own article
In my opinion, the section on LPFM in the United States is long enough to warrant its own article. Given the importance of the topic in regards to noncommercial broadcasting and the number of sources available, I also believe more information of note could be added. I would post a template to this effect, but am not sure which template would be most appropriate. Assistance and feedback would be appreciated. Allreet (talk) 15:49, 31 January 2019 (UTC)