What Are Repeater Contracts?
Why Are They Needed?

Few GMRS licensees own their own mobile relay stations (repeaters). Most licensees who operate through a repeater use someone else's station. (There are about 3500 GMRS repeater stations licensed or operating nationally.) A repeater-usage contract can establish who pays for use of the repeater, who is responsible for its maintenance, and in general, the conditions under which the non-owner user is permitted to use this station.

Under the current GMRS Rules, there are three types of arrangements under which a GMRS licensee may use someone else's repeater station. (You can view these Rules online or download a copy.)

1. The user may license for the use of that station, even though he or she is not actually the owner. If there is more than a single user of this repeater, each would have his or her own separate callsign for that station. This is known as multiple licensing, and is authorized under section 95.35 of the FCC Rules.

2. The user may enter into a written contract to operate that repeater station under the authority of a pre-existent license (held by someone else, such as the station's owner) that authorizes that repeater station's operation. In this situation, one licensee (the user) is actually authorized to operate under someone else's (the station owner's) license through that repeater station. However, the original station licensee is still held responsible for the first person's communications through that station. This is known as cooperative/shared-use, and is authorized under section 95.33 of the FCC Rules.

3. The user is a personal licensee, or is authorized (see 95.179) to be a station operator under the license of an immediate family member. This type of user may communicate from his or her mobile unit (a hand-held or a vehicular-mounted radio) through someone else's repeater if he or she has received verbal or other permission to use that repeater from that station's licensee. A written contract is not required in this circumstance. This is known as transient use, and is authorized under section 95.53(d) in the FCC Rules.

Over the years the prevalence of one or another of these three arrangements to use someone else's repeater has changed. At one time, the FCC required that the repeater station's license in a shared/cooperative system (method 2 above) had to be modified to add or delete individual users. This encouraged many licensees to use multiple licensing (method 1 above), in order to avoid constant modifications to the repeater station's license. (Method 3 was not yet available at that time.)

Shared/cooperative use gained in popularity once the FCC dropped the requirement to modify the repeater station license each time another user was added or dropped. Shared/cooperative use remains the most popular licensing method today, since it focuses operational responsibility on a single licensee. (In a multiply licensed system, each license is jointly and severally responsible for all transmissions of that station. For instance, an FCC notice of violation and monetary fine could be imposed on each licensee of that multiply-licensed repeater if its transmissions were not properly identified, or if it transmitted off frequency!)

A petition to prohibit multiple licensing of GMRS repeaters will be filed in the near future. If this change is adopted, only a single party will be allowed to license for any particular repeater. Existing licenses that also authorize that repeater would likely have to be modified when they next expire. (The PRSG's newsletter, the Personal Radio Exchange, will discuss this in future issues.)

Under the second option above (shared/cooperative use), a written contract is required. The use of that station must be under one of these three conditions (see 95.33(a)(3)):

• The station is shared without charge; or
• The station is shared on a non-profit basis, with contributions to capital and operating expenses prorated equitably among all participants of the shared/cooperative use of that station; or
• The station is shared on a reciprocal basis, i.e., use of one licensee's stations for the use of another licensee's stations without charge for either capital or operating expenses.

Many GMRS licensees feel that a written repeater contract should be used even under the multiply-licensed format (method 1 above), in order to clarify operational and financial responsibility.

Before the FCC amended its Rules (October 1988) to permit the third option above ("transient use"), the FCC permitted the use of someone else's repeater without either a multiple-licensing or shared/cooperative arrangement, but only so long as at least one of the parties to the communications exchange was authorized (under some multiple-licensing or shared/cooperative agreement) to use that repeater. The FCC's 1988 changes established the right of a repeater licensee to grant permission to other licensees to operate mobile units through that repeater. (Operation of a control station through any repeater still requires either multiple licensing or a written control for shared/cooperative use.)

Dozens of organizations and individual repeater owners/licensees have developed their own written contracts for repeater sharing. Two versions are available here for downloading. Although they were each developed about a decade ago, they still demonstrate a basic format that is appropriate to use today.

The first is a sample contract (with attachments) from one of the nation's very first shared/cooperative-use repeaters (in the north Chicago suburbs). You can download a 14 KB, ZIP-compressed version of a 39 KB ASCII file (CTR-PRKN.ZIP) by clicking here:

The second is a sample contract from one of the nation's premier public-service teams, Suburban REACT in Philadelphia, PA. This contract is for use with a multiply-licensed repeater, but where operating costs are still shared among all users. You can download a 14 KB, ZIP-compressed version of a 29 KB ASCII file (CTR-SUBR.ZIP) by clicking here:

The PRSG's flagship publication, the GMRS National Repeater Guide, also describes the means by which to request temporary permission to use someone else's repeater. Many GMRS repeater licensees have provided us the specific instructions that they request others use, and we have described these instructions in the Guide.