"Government Only" Products

[adaminc]

Hello all,

Just a quick question, that I searched for and couldnt find. I am thinking about buying an SDR (Software Defined Radio) receiver soon, and the company who offers the product to the public also offers a "Government Only" version, which I has full access to the entire spectrum (150kHz-4GHz) whereas the public version has some of the spectrum blocked, or unusable by the device.

So my question is, has anyone ever bought a "Government Only" product through the military for personal use, is it even allowed?

 

[George Wallace]

The Government regulates the Radio/Television spectrums.  Frequencies are allocated for various uses.  Some for Radio; some for Television; some for Cell Phones; etc.  The Government has assigned certain frequencies for Military Use Only.  Look into what the CRTC does and how it regulates the air waves.

 

[PuckChaser]

So my question is, has anyone ever bought a "Government Only" product through the military for personal use, is it even allowed?

You wouldn't be able to purchase through this program, unless you are an approved Government purchaser. Depending on the SDR, you could do a lot of funky stuff which the CRTC wouldn't like, therefore limited to Government/Law Enforcement.

 

[adaminc]

You wouldn't be able to purchase through this program, unless you are an approved Government purchaser. Depending on the SDR, you could do a lot of funky stuff which the CRTC wouldn't like, therefore limited to Government/Law Enforcement.

Well, it's just a receiver, it cannot transmit regardless of what you do with programming, all you can do is modify what it recieves and how it demodulates, how it works with the demodulated signal, essentially you could do all this with a hardware device if you know how to build one. The Govt only version seems to exclude Cellular Frequencies only, not sure which ones, probably all of them (800Mhz, 900MHz, 1800MHz, 1900MHz, 2100MHz).

But now that I know I can't purchase the Govt only version simply by being in the Military, I will go ahead and get the public version.

 

[cdn031]

Can't help but be curious - what piece of kit are you looking at???
Harris?

 

[adaminc]

I was looking at the WR-3700e from winradio.com

 

[adaminc]

As far as I can tell, it the public version just skips certain frequencies, if it let you access them, then it would be just a simple plugin to demodulate it, if you don't have access in the first place, then there is nothing you can do about it.

 

[Ex Ranger Instructor]

Look into what the CRTC does and how it regulates the air waves.

It's actually a very common mistake to believe that the CRTC is the responsible agency for RF Spectrum management in Canada.  They aren't.  Industry Canada is the agency that regulates Canadian use of the RF Spectrum.  The CRTC is solely concerned with broadcast practices and content.