1. Short title This Act may be cited as the Amateur Radio Communications Improvement Act . 2. Findings Congress finds the following: (1) More than 778,000 amateur operators in the United States are licensed by the Federal Communications Commission in the amateur radio services, and, by treaty, additional amateur operators licensed by other sovereign entities and jurisdictions are authorized to operate within the United States. (2) Amateur radio, in addition to providing life-saving emergency communications at no cost to taxpayers, provides a fertile ground for technical self-training in modern telecommunications, electronics technology, and emergency communications techniques and protocols. (3) In 2016, the Commission issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking agreeing with the petition of the American Radio Relay League to remove an outmoded limit on digital data rate transmissions (contained in part 97.307(f) of title 47, Code of Federal Regulations) that constrains the use of the amateur spectrum, particularly during emergencies and declared disasters. (4) Adopted in 1980, the present data rate limit is a relic of an era long since relegated to obsolescence by the remarkable advancements in digital data communications. (5) The present data rate limit has no place in the modern digital communications world. Slower speeds needlessly occupy busy amateur frequencies for longer than necessary to transmit messages, leading to unnecessary crowding without benefit to anyone, and a delay in the transmission of mission critical information during emergencies and declared disasters. (6) United States amateurs developed the first amateur digital protocols, but now are consigned to watching as amateurs in other countries take the lead in squeezing more data within each bandwidth. Amateurs in other countries universally are permitted to use modern digital data speeds denied amateurs in the United States. United States amateurs can hear and decode higher speed signals every day, but are not permitted to respond with the same