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 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

, 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 broadcast receiver which only receives content. It is an audio (sound) transceiver, a transmitter and receiver in one unit, used for bidirection ...

service similar to the

Citizens band Citizens band radio (also known as CB radio), used in many countries, is a land mobile radio system, a system allowing short-distance person-to-many persons bidirectional voice communication among individuals, using two way radios operating on ...

(CB). Established by the

U.S. 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 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

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 jurisdicti ...

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, 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 ...

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 Store and forward is a telecommunications technique in which information is sent to an intermediate station where it is kept and sent at a later time to the final destination or to another intermediate station. The intermediate station, or node in ...

operations, and

radio repeater A radio repeater is a combination of a radio receiver and a radio transmitter that receives a signal and retransmits it, so that two-way radio signals can cover longer distances. A repeater sited at a high elevation can allow two mobile stations, ...

s are not permitted. In 2009, Industry Canada (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: 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 computing. In analog fre ...

(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 A grandfather clause, also known as grandfather policy, grandfathering, or grandfathered in, is a provision in which an old rule continues to apply to some existing situations while a new rule will apply to all future cases. Those exempt from t ...

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 Internationa ...

(seven islands) *

Baker Island Baker Island, formerly known as New Nantucket, is an uninhabited atoll just north of the Equator in the central Pacific Ocean about southwest of Honolulu. The island lies almost halfway between Hawaii and Australia. Its nearest neighbor is H ...

* 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 cent ...

Island *

Howland Island Howland Island () is an uninhabited coral island located just north of the equator in the central Pacific Ocean, about southwest of Honolulu. The island lies almost halfway between Hawaii and Australia and is an unorganized, unincorporated ter ...

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 Un ...

* Johnston Atoll (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 hectar ...

* Midway Atoll (Islets Eastern and Sand) *

Navassa Island Navassa Island (; ht, Lanavaz; french: l'île de la Navasse, sometimes ) is a small uninhabited island in the Caribbean Sea. Located northeast of Jamaica, south of Cuba, and west of Jérémie on the Tiburon Peninsula of Haiti, it is subject ...

* 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 a ...

(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 permanen ...

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 unincorporated and organized territory ...

(50 islets and cays) *

Wake Island Wake Island ( mh, Ānen Kio, translation=island of the 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, southeast of T ...

* 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 In telecommunications, Continuous Tone-Coded Squelch System or CTCSS is one type of in-band signaling that is used to reduce the annoyance of listening to other users on a shared two-way radio communication channel. (See squelch.) It is sometime ...

or DCS that helps block out unwanted transmissions. To make MURS two-way radios work together, they must have matching

or DCS tones. This can usually be done via basic programming which almost all MURS two-way radios support. The goTenna, 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 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 retrieve water ...

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 Sam's West, Inc. (doing business as Sam's Club) is an American chain of membership-only retail warehouse clubs owned and operated by Walmart Inc., founded in 1983 and named after Walmart founder Sam Walton as Sam’s Wholesale Club. , Sam's C ...

use a two way radio, made by

Motorola Solutions Motorola Solutions, Inc., is an American video equipment, telecommunications equipment, software, systems and services provider that succeeded Motorola, Inc., following the spinoff of the mobile phone division into Motorola Mobility in 2011. Th ...

, 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