Who chooses Radio Frequencies?

 

As children, we ask ourselves all kinds of things: Who names the hurricanes? Who says what a new planet is going to be called? And probably more than one (in childhood or adulthood) has asked: How are the radio frequencies determined?

 

You know, how is it that someone chooses that a radio station will be hosted on frequency 94.6? (for example).


The answer is sadder than many of us would like, since it is not as easy as saying "I have decided to open my own radio station and I want it to be hosted on frequency 66.6 and it will be called The Devil's Station. Nope! Unfortunately the choice of frequency is not in the hands of the entrepreneur who opens a new radio station, and even less in the XXI century where the radio spectrum (What is that?) is already saturated with all kinds of signals issued by radio-communicators, radio stations and everything you need from the Frequency Modulation to work.


Thus, it is necessary that when adding a new frequency in a certain area (let's say ... your city) this does not interfere with other signals, you have to separate them from each other. As an example; if where you live there were two stations with very close frequencies: The 101.2 that plays Opera and the 101.4 that plays Country then the entire city would probably have a mixture of both musical genres when wanting to tune in either of the two stations (Opera-Country ... it does not sound bad huh?)

But the answer to who chooses these channels and/or frequencies is nothing less than the Department of Communications of each country. it is this governmental institution the one that in a certain case would tell the entrepreneur what frequency corresponds to him. Sad, in my case I always believed that everyone chose their frequency.