Ham radio faced a baud rate limit that hasn’t changed since 1980. The FCC’s proposal would instead impose a bandwidth limit of 2.8 kHz, allowing for more efficient spectrum use.
Here’s a brief explanation of the changes by American Radio Relay League general counsel David Siddall, as quoted in RadioWorld:
“This is a very simple change. In 1980, at the inception of digital technologies that could be used by radio amateurs, the FCC adopted a speed limit of 300 baud for the stated purpose of limiting the amount of spectrum occupied by any single signal,” Siddall said. “Radio amateurs, being tinkerers and experimenters, worked to develop faster and faster speeds that still fit within the standard spectrum bandwidth. Eventually their innovations to the technology significantly increased spectrum efficiency but ran up against the FCC baud rate limit.”
[Radio World]
