Talk:Family Radio Service

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1 Inclusion of other FRS-like services
2 CTCSS
3 FRS in other countries
4 Cultural differences

[edit] Inclusion of other FRS-like services

Should this article be revised? It seems to be written from a US perspective, with other countries being considered "foreign".

The article is about the US Family Radio Service. There is a section explaining about FRS-like services in other (non-US) countries. What specifically would you recommend? (Please sign your comments with two dashes and four tildes --~~~~so we can keep track of who's aying what). --Wtshymanski 17:31, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

The title of the article is "Family Radio Service", so I do feel it seems odd for it to be about the US service only, with other countries put in a section seperately, instead of making the article focus on the techlogy and its history, and then perhaps talk about ALL country-specific implementations together afterwards. Certainly no other communications article ("television", "radio", "telephone") would be written this way... --guru 04:14, 16 September 2005 (UTC)gurudata

Note the capitals in the title - these are significant. The title is not meant to be generic - I could see the arguement that the name the Americans chose for the service could perhaps be considered generic, however the article isn't meant to be about personal radio services in general, but the specific FRS implementation in the US and North America. I've seen an unfortunate tendancy in Wikipedia technical articles to try to talk about *everything* that relates to the topic under one article...there's no need for that here, put in a link and the interested person can click to read more deeply. I'd like a Xerox article to be about the Haloid Xerox Corporation, not every conceivable type of photocopier, as another example. --Wtshymanski 13:39, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

If someone wants to add sections about nations other than the USA, I see no problem. Anyone can contribute. In the USA and Canada, it seems that FRS has more or less "merged" with GMRS. You rarely see 14 channel FRS only radios anymore. Jwilkers 13:54, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Many radios support both services, as they live in the same bands, (and even share 7 channels). However, the services have not merged! They are distinct services, with distinct limits and requirements.

And personal radio services in other countries—similar as they may be in principal—are not FRS; the only such service named "Family Radio Service" is the one in the USA. That is the one that this article is about. Other such services have their own articles, and should not be addressed at length in the FRS article. That is what links are for. :) —StationaryTraveller 00:03, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

If the descriptions of other licence-free services were bigger and more comprehensive (modes, operating restrictions, etc.) we could have a free-standing article - until someone beefs up this section quite a lot, I don't think it hurts the FRS article to carry short descriptions of other similar services elsewhere in the world. Incidentally, "Family Radio Service" is the name in Canada, too. --Wtshymanski 14:03, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] CTCSS

"These codes are sometimes called "privacy codes", but they offer no real deterrence against eavesdropping as the number of codes is not very high." The limited number of codes isn't the only reason; all that someone needs to do is have their CTCSS feature turned off and they'll hear all traffic on the channel. I believe most radios default with it off, so all radios by default can hear any CTCSS encoded traffic on any channel on their radio. --Altailji 03:44, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

In fact that is not any privacy code, they're just sub-audible code for the radio to recognize whether to open the squalsh or not. --218.191.11.162 19:13, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. But nevertheless, the radio manufacturers do market CTCSS codes as privacy codes on the product packaging. My concern is with the description from the article I quoted above that tries to explain why privacy codes aren't private, but the explanation (about the number of codes, not because they're just sub-audible tones) is wrong and should be edited. If nobody disagrees with my point, I'll go ahead and edit it. --Altailji 14:43, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it looks like somebody else beat me to the punch. The new wording is much better. --Altailji 17:40, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] FRS in other countries

Up to now, FRS in US, Europe, Canada, HK, Macau, China has been included. Wtshymanski suggested the addition of japan info into the paragraph, however, i'm wondering whether the 422Mhz, 421Mhz and 420Mhz band should be included in the article or not. Unlike HK and China, they don't call the 422Mhz (etc) band as FRS, and also the power output limit is very low, 0.01W. Should this info be included in this FRS article? How do you think? BurnDuck 16:54, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone have a citation for U.S. -spec FRS/GMRS radios being used in Brazil? Even if I found a Brazilian web site, I can't read Portugese! --Wtshymanski 23:58, 13 August 2006 (UTC)