Topic summary
MMSI Number
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Maritime Mobile Service Identity.
Exhaustion of MMSIs
To help mitigate against MMSI number exhaustion, manufacturers are required to cripple DSC-capable radios so that an MMSI number can only be entered once, which means that a device owner may not move the radio from one boat to another. This is especially egregious for hand-held VHF devices, for which a single MMSI number makes little sense.