In the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

, the Multi-Use Radio Service (MURS) is a licensed by rule (i.e. under part 95, subpart J, of title 47, Code of Federal Regulations)

two-way radio A two-way radio is a radio that can both transmit and receive radio waves (a transceiver), unlike a radio broadcasting, broadcast receiver which only receives content. It is an audio (sound) transceiver, a transmitter and radio receiver, receive ...

service similar to the Citizens band (CB). Established by the U.S.

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisd ...

in the fall of 2000, MURS created a radio service allowing for licensed by rule (Part 95) operation in a narrow selection of the

VHF band Very high frequency (VHF) is the ITU designation for the range of radio frequency electromagnetic waves (radio waves) from 30 to 300 megahertz (MHz), with corresponding wavelengths of ten meters to one meter. Frequencies immediately below VHF ...

, with a power limit of 2

watt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James Wa ...

s. The FCC formally defines MURS as "a private, two-way, short-distance voice or data communications service for personal or business activities of the general public." MURS stations may not be connected to the public telephone network, may not be used for store and forward operations, and radio repeaters are not permitted. In 2009,

Industry Canada Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED; french: Innovation, Sciences et Développement économique Canada; french: ISDE, label=none)''Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada'' is the applied title under the Federal ...

(IC) established a five-year transition plan, which would have permitted the use of MURS in Canada starting June 2014. In August 2014 IC announced a deferral of MURS introduction, as "the Department does not feel that the introduction of MURS devices in Canada is warranted at this time, and has decided to defer the introduction of MURS devices in Canada until a clearer indication of actual need is provided by Canadian MURS advocates and/or stakeholders ..."

Eligibility

No licenses are required or issued for MURS within the United States. :Any person is authorized to use the MURS frequencies given that it: :* Is not a foreign government or a representative of a foreign government. :* Uses the transmitter in accordance with 47 CFR. 95.1309. :* Operates in accordance with the rules contained in Sections 95.1301-95.1309. :* Operates only legal, type-accepted MURS equipment.

Frequencies

MURS comprises the following five

frequencies Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit of time. It is also occasionally referred to as ''temporal frequency'' for clarity, and is distinct from '' angular frequency''. Frequency is measured in hertz (Hz) which is e ...

: Channels 1–3 must use "narrowband"

frequency modulation Frequency modulation (FM) is the encoding of information in a carrier wave by varying the instantaneous frequency of the wave. The technology is used in telecommunications, radio broadcasting, signal processing, and Run-length limited#FM: .280. ...

(2.5 kHz deviation; 11.25 kHz bandwidth). Channels 4 and 5 may use either "wideband" FM (5 kHz deviation; 20 kHz bandwidth) or "narrowband" FM. All five channels may use amplitude modulation with a bandwidth up to 8 kHz. MURS falls under part 95 and was not mandated for narrow-banding, such as those of Part 90 in the public service bands by January 2013. Because previous business band licensees who have maintained their active license remain grandfathered with their existing operating privileges, it is possible to find repeaters or other operations not authorized by Part 95 taking place. These are not necessarily illegal. If legal, such operations may enjoy primary status on their licensed frequency and as such are legally protected from harmful interference by MURS users.

Range

MURS range will vary, depending on antenna size and placement. With an external antenna, ranges of or more can be expected.

Authorized modes

Permitted areas of operation

MURS operation is authorized anywhere a CB radio station is authorized and within or over any area of the world where radio services are regulated by the FCC. Those areas are within the territorial limits of: * The fifty United States * The District of Columbia *

American Samoa American Samoa ( sm, Amerika Sāmoa, ; also ' or ') is an unincorporated territory of the United States located in the South Pacific Ocean, southeast of the island country of Samoa. Its location is centered on . It is east of the Internation ...

(seven islands) * Baker Island * Caribbean Insular areas * Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands * Commonwealth of Puerto Rico *

Guam Guam (; ch, Guåhan ) is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States in the Micronesia subregion of the western Pacific Ocean. It is the westernmost point and territory of the United States (reckoned from the geographic ce ...

Island * Howland Island *

Jarvis Island Jarvis Island (; formerly known as Bunker Island or Bunker's Shoal) is an uninhabited coral island located in the South Pacific Ocean, about halfway between Hawaii and the Cook Islands. It is an unincorporated, unorganized territory of the Uni ...

Johnston Atoll Johnston Atoll is an unincorporated territory of the United States, currently administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Johnston Atoll is a National Wildlife Refuge and part of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine Nation ...

(Islets East, Johnston, North and Sand) *

Kingman Reef Kingman Reef is a largely submerged, uninhabited, triangle-shaped reef, geologically an atoll, east-west and north-south, in the North Pacific Ocean, roughly halfway between the Hawaiian Islands and American Samoa. It has an area of 3 he ...

* Midway Atoll (Islets Eastern and Sand) * Navassa Island * Pacific Insular areas *

Palmyra Atoll Palmyra Atoll (), also referred to as Palmyra Island, is one of the Northern Line Islands (southeast of Kingman Reef and north of Kiribati). It is located almost due south of the Hawaiian Islands, roughly one-third of the way between Hawaii an ...

(more than fifty

islet An islet is a very small, often unnamed island. Most definitions are not precise, but some suggest that an islet has little or no vegetation and cannot support human habitation. It may be made of rock, sand and/or hard coral; may be perman ...

s) *

United States Virgin Islands The United States Virgin Islands,. Also called the ''American Virgin Islands'' and the ''U.S. Virgin Islands''. officially the Virgin Islands of the United States, are a group of Caribbean islands and an Territories of the United States, uninco ...

(50 islets and cays) *

Wake Island Wake Island ( mh, Ānen Kio, translation=island of the Sida fallax, kio flower; also known as Wake Atoll) is a coral atoll in the western Pacific Ocean in the northeastern area of the Micronesia subregion, east of Guam, west of Honolulu, sou ...

* Aboard any vessel of the United States, with the permission of the captain, while the vessel is traveling either domestically or in international waters

Restrictions

* Transmitter power output is limited to 2 watts. * The highest point of any MURS antenna must not be more than above the ground or above the highest point of the structure to which it is mounted, whichever is higher. * Transmitting on MURS frequencies is not allowed while aboard aircraft in flight. * Devices that use MURS must be specially labeled and certified.

Products

There are a wide variety of radio products that use MURS frequencies. MURS devices include wireless base station intercoms, handheld two-way radios, wireless dog training collars, wireless public address units, customer service callboxes, wireless remote switches, and wireless callboxes with or without gate opening ability. Since MURS uses standard frequencies, most devices that use MURS are compatible with each other. Most analog two-way radios utilize a technology called CTCSS or DCS that helps block out unwanted transmissions. To make MURS two-way radios work together, they must have matching CTCSS or DCS tones. This can usually be done via basic programming which almost all MURS two-way radios support. The

goTenna goTenna (goTenna Inc.) is a Brooklyn, New York-based startup that designs and develops professional mesh networking technologies for off-grid and decentralized communications. goTenna devices pair with smartphones and, through intelligent mob ...

, a digital radio product, operates on the MURS band and pairs with

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

s to enable users to send texts and share locations on a

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer ...

basis. goTenna is not interoperable with other MURS devices, even though they operate on the same spectrum, employing "listen-before-talk" to reduce interference in the band's five channels.

Notable users

According to Bill Fawcett's Spaniel Journal,

Spaniel A spaniel is a Dog type, type of gun dog. Spaniels were especially bred to flush game out of denser brush. By the late 17th century, spaniels had been specialized into water and land breeds. The extinct English Water Spaniel was used to retrie ...

pro-handler Dan Langhans was given a set of VHF business-band radios on the frequency of 154.57 MHz which became known by the trade as "blue dot" radios.Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Blue Dot Radios... But Were Afraid to Ask
/ref>

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

and Sam's Club use a two way radio, made by Motorola Solutions, model Motorola RDM2070D, which is exclusive to Walmart and Sam's Club. The Motorola RDM2070D is preprogrammed on MURS frequencies with most channels using CTCSS tone 21/4Z/136.5Hz.Multi-Use Radio Service (RadioReference)
/ref>

References

External links

FCC Wireless Services: MURS Home

{{Telecommunications Bandplans Radio communications Radio regulations