Federal Government Shutdown – Reopening October 17 – Low Power FM Radio Filing Window Update

government shutdownOn October 16th The Senate and The House of Representatives passed a Senate-brokered bill to fully reopen the U.S. government and raise its debt ceiling.

Terms of the deal include funding the government through Jan. 15, 2014, and allows the U.S. Treasury to continue borrowing money through Feb. 7, 2014 – avoiding default. However, the country could watch the a similar drama play out in three months if a long-term budget plan can’t be voted upon.

The bill offers back pay to furloughed federal workers with interest. Additionally, a December deadline has been set for lawmakers to create a detailed plan on long-term spending cuts, and include income verification on the healthcare exchanges set up by the government as a result of the Affordable Care Act.

This means the Federal government should be back in operation on sometime on October 17th. It may take a few hours on reopening day for all FCC systems to return online.

Next the FCC will address the Low Power FM Radio Filing window which was set to open on October 15th.

Nexus will be working alongside our allies to reach out to the FCC to ask for a slight delay of the LPFM filing window. If the government opens on Thursday October 17, we would be into day 3 of the filing window. The FCC might extend the window by three or four days, or they might postpone the window to next month as suggested by Nexus, recent and other LPFM advocacies.

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.

Finally, if there is still ample time between the day of recovery and a rescheduled LPFM filing window, we will accept new customers for Low Power FM Radio application preparation engineering services.

This should be the last update regarding the government shutdown until the window has been rescheduled for later this year. You can also find updates regarding the shutdown and LPFM Filing window at LPFM Store Dot Com. Alternately a hotline has been setup with pre-recorded information at 903.550.0203. The hotline is available free of charge 24 hours a day.