In June of last year, we reported that the FCC had decided to begin using five-character “grantee codes” in connection with its equipment certifications. (The problem was that the Commission was running out of the three-character codes it had historically used.) It took a couple of months for that decision to become technically “effective”. And, apparently, it has taken yet another eight months actually to implement the new format.
We know that because the Commission’s Office of Engineering and Technology, which is in charge of the equipment certification program, has announced that it’s going to start issuing five-character grantee codes as of May 1, 2013. From that date on, grantee codes – also known as FCC identifiers or FCC ID’s – will consist of “an Arabic numeral between two and nine followed by four alphanumeric characters (capital letters or Arabic numerals between two and nine).” Check out our post from last June for more information.
