The National Communications Commission (NCC) on Wednesday decided to drop a licensing fee for personal location beacon (PLB) devices, which is expected to ease emergency rescues.
The technology is used to help rescuers find emergency beacons activated by ships, aircraft and people in distress.
The International Cospas-Sarsat Program, a satellite-based system for search and rescue, detects and tracks these radio beacons and then distributes data to rescue authorities so they can execute missions more precisely.
First established by Canada, France, the US and the former Soviet Union in 1979, the program also has 26 ground segment providers, 11 user states and two organizations.
Commission spokesperson Yu Hsiao-cheng (虞孝成) said PLB devices are regulated by the Administrative Regulations on Controlled Telecommunications Radio-Frequency Devices (電信管制射頻器材管理辦法). Based on the regulations, users of such devices must pay a licensing fee of NT$3,900.
“Many of the nongovernment rescue teams, as well as Legislative Yuan lawmakers, hoped that the government would relax the regulations on such equipment to facilitate rescue efforts. They hoped the government would lower the licensing fee and streamline the license applications, letting more people carry such devices when they go hiking and enhancing the efficiency of rescue operations,” Yu said.
Yu added that commissioners decided that users of such devices would be exempt from applying for licenses. He added that the commission would regulate only the specifications of such devices, which it must certify.
“The certification makes sure that the devices generate codes recognized by Cospas-Sarsat,” he said.
Yu emphasized that PLB device users must register with the rescue agency to allow verification of distress signals.
Aside from amending the regulations, the commission expressed hope that the Maritime and Port Bureau of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications would quickly establish the platform for registration.
According to the administration, the bureau’s Taipei Mission Control Center is in charge of receiving and interpreting the signals.
If a Taiwanese tourist traveling in the US sends out signals, for example, the signals would first be picked up by the control center in the US. After identifying Taiwan’s national code, the center would inform Taipei of the data and ask the control center to verify, the commission said.
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