Here's the details, he was using an an unknown transmitter so we don't know if it was a legal one, BETS, but what he was doing was illegal as he was rebroadcasting from other stations and transmitting that through his station in the main street of Huntsville Ontario.
Don't know what the point of that was. He said he wanted to hear his favorite stations on the radio in his office. He broadcasted from his computer. Probably from streams. It could also be heard around downtown Huntsville.
https://www.muskokaregion.com/news/industry-canada-cracks-down-on-illegal-radio-transmission/article_e75c4dbb-88e7-504f-8922-a9c398c7e5e5.html
But who would know that 102.7 is reserved for Algonquin Park news and not usable by any one else.
@mark Great find! Kind of a humorous article too.
".. “I thought, ‘gee I hope I’m not breaking the law,’” said Samuell when he first saw them. ... He saw them taking pictures of his business and beckoned them over. “They said, ‘we’re looking for a rebroadcaster,’ and I said that’s me. I’m the guy, come on in.”
I kind of tilted my head when it said: "To broadcast on the FM dial, you must apply for a broadcasting licence", is that some kind of implication that it's alright to on AM?? But what most jumped out at me more than anything, on a side note mind you, was this:
"He says he just wanted to hear his stations in his kitchen while eating breakfast — previously impossible since his computer is in the basement — and wanted his clients to hear the stations in his office’s waiting room."
The reason I found it so stark is that I heard almost the exact same story before, or very similar anyway...
"... So I hooked it up to a computer because I wanted to hear jazz in the kitchen while I was cooking. Next door to me was an elderly housing project. They could hear it, and word got around within a week that there was great jazz going on. So we came out of the closet"
And thus, a famous part 15 station in the US was launched. https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/jonathan-westerling-and-radio-sausalito-4062019.php
@richpowers The article said he was using a rebroadcaster that is not approved for Canada. Which would be a transmitter. Had he been just using a Decade MS-100 which may not have been on the market yet he would likely have been legal. But he was rebroadcasting other stations on the air. On a reserved frequency. Even with a legal unlicensed transmitter he still couldn't do what he was doing.
The writer of the article added the bit about needing a licence. We don't know what was actually said by the ISED agents.
With a BETS transmitter and originating his programming he would most likely been OK.
Problem, Even Decade wasn't on the market yet, nor was a Procaster. But the Chinese ones were!
Anyway, great find on the story, not really that many documentations I know of about Canadian micro-broadcasters, positive or negative, other than this one and another past citation you brought up last week https://www.part15.org/community/regulations-law/procaster-certification-canada/#post-61475
The more history to draw from the better the picture can be painted of eras past.
@mark Anyway, great find on the story, not really that many documentations I know of about Canadian micro-broadcasters, positive or negative, other than this one and another past citation you brought up last week https://www.part15.org/community/regulations-law/procaster-certification-canada/#post-61475
The more history to draw from the better the picture can be painted of eras past.
Well there is the old one about Radio Beaver Lodge I posted a year or two ago..
The Decade was available in 2010, which is when the story was published. But the article did say that he was using a transmitter that wasn't legal in Canada, so was likely Chinese.
As you say, if he was using a certified BETS transmitter (effectively his ISED license), and originating his programming, he would not need a CRTC broadcast license, and would be OK.