AM expanded band

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2008)

Extended MW broadcast band, 1605 kHz-1705 kHz, is a medium wave broadcast allocation (515 kHz–1715 kHz). The band became officially available c. 1993 only in ITU Region 2 (North and South America). It is popular with microbroadcasters for having slightly better propagation characteristics than the standard AM band. Though supported on most (but not all) modern AM radio units sold in the Americas, this band is often unavailable to older radio receivers except for those with substantial overcoverage. On such radios, the 1600-1700 segment was labelled "Police", since it was the original police radio band.

In the United States, commercial broadcasters using these frequencies are required to use AM stereo by order of the FCC, though there is little commercial availability or demand for the required receivers (and many AM stereo stations have ended those broadcasts due to those factors). Since the advent of HD Radio and the AM band as more a band for talk radio than music, it is unlikely the FCC would take any action against an extended band station only broadcasting in monoural sound.

Although the extended band is not officially allocated in Europe it is used by Vatican Radio and a number of "hobby" pirate radio stations, particularly in The Netherlands, Greece and Serbia.

In Australia, many commercial licenses have been released for the band. However, they have restrictions not placed on licensees of the standard MW band, including a much narrower bandwidth and greatly reducing sound quality. The vast bulk of licenses have never been used. Due to a number of factors, few Australian stations in this band have many listeners.

Frequencies used

See also

• AM broadcasting

External links

• FCC AM Expanded band document