Re: ive always wondered

[Garrett Wollman <wollman>]

<<On Tue, 16 Oct 2001 08:10:21 -0400, "Bill O'Neill" <billo@shoreham.net> said:

> Why was what we know as "FM" shifted from this spectrum up to the
> 88.1-107.9?  Why not just build around the 40s?

The conspiracy-minded have claimed that it was at the behest of
Sarnoff, who wanted to make certain that FM would remain uncompetitive
to his (RCA's) Standard Broadcast [band] stations.

BTW, the FM band starts at 87.9, not 88.1.

In Japan, the FM band is 76 to 90 MHz, which causes problems for
antipodean purchasers of used Japanese domestic-market cars.  In the
former Soviet bloc, the FM band was 64 to 74 MHz, with channel spacing
in 10-kHz increments (so one might be listening to a station on 68.45
MHz); this band is in the process of being abandoned in favor of the
international standard.  In most of the rest of the world, the FM band
is 88.0 to 108.0 MHz, with 100-kHz channel spacing (so you might be be
able to listen to stations on 96.2 and 103.0 in addition to 101.1).
Most of the world has abandoned the VHF-low band (Band I in ITU-R
nomenclature) for television, so it would be possible to expand the FM
broadcast band there down to 50 MHz.

-GAWollman