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Comment by xxpor | Hacker News Reader

They have to assess fees for actual costs. The marginal cost of a database update that a human never reviews is $0.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/4986...

I hope you know that's not true. That database has a license and/or support fees regardless of how frequently it’s updated. Same for the OS. Then there’s the hardware it runs on. The backup software and associated costs, etc.

There’s absolutely no possible way the cost is $0 unless that database is entirely funded already.

Keyword of the parent comment is _marginal_

In a way, it’s funded by the entities that actually need to pay for an FCC license (mainly commercial ones)… AFAIK, the FCC ULS (Universal Licensing System) is a unified database of all FCC licensees, regardless of type. If paying licensees can fund the database, then tacking on Amateur licenses to it is a marginal (if not effectively zero) cost.

Have you ever used the ULS? It's been around, with essentially no change, since September 17, 1998.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180507194202/http://wireless.f...

The dang about page wasn't updated for 10 years!

The cost of the DB license itself isn't really attributable to any one service, while on the other hand, is MORE than covered by a single 5G spectrum auction.

Amateur licenses had application fees back in the day, and the FCC got rid of them ~10 years ago because the cost of administering just collecting the fee was more than it was worth.

But the aggregate cost to create and maintain that database is non-zero. That cost doesn’t scale at the same factor as licensees, but would still amortize to >$0.

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