The six-monthly payment made by Citizen's Wave-Band users has been abolished.It has been substituted by a one-off payment made in the act of registration by the user. This alteration has been made to simplify access to this telecommunications service by reducing the processing load connected to it. The nature of the act of registration and not that of licensing is a symptom of this.
At the same time it was decided to technically expand the possibilities put at the disposal of this service which is used by 17,000 Portuguese people.
Therefore the Citizen's Wave-Band will now be able to be used on Amplitude Modulation (AM) stations. It will be remembered that only Frequency Modulation (FM) stations were authorized for this until very recently.
Both alterations relative to the Citizen's Wave Band - Personal Radio Service are foreseen in Decree-Law nr. 47/2000. In accordance with the same diploma, the Instituto das Comunicações de Portugal (ICP) will maintain its responsibilities in terms of authorization, fiscalisation and supervision of the use of this technology.
The Citizen's Wave-Band is a private radio-communications service destined for multilateral communications of a utilitarian, recreational or professional character by holders of low frequency stations. The radio-electrical spectrum bandwidth reserved for these communications is between 26,960 and 27,419 MHz.
