Ask most GMRS users where their service came from and you will get a shrug. But the General Mobile Radio Service is one of the oldest radio services the FCC ever created — older than CB, older than FRS, and nearly as old as amateur radio licensing itself.
Its story begins in the late 1940s, when the FCC created the Citizens Class A Radio Service. The original service ran wideband FM with 15 kHz deviation on 50 kHz channels up around 465 MHz, using tube-type transceivers, and transmitters were limited to 60 watts of plate input power to the final amplifier. Business users were welcome, and radios came from consumer electronics firms and commercial two-way vendors alike.
The 1960s brought a squeeze: the UHF 450–470 MHz band was re-channelized to 25 kHz spacing, halving transmitter deviation to 5 kHz and doubling the available channels. The companion Class B service lost its channels to other services. In the 1970s, the power rule changed to 50 watts measured at the transmitter output, and the service began evolving into what we know today.
In 1987 the FCC stopped licensing new business users in the service, and a 1988 FCC order gave it its present name: the General Mobile Radio Service — a personal land-mobile service of mobiles, base stations, repeaters, and control stations operating in the 462 and 467 MHz bands.
The modern rules took shape in 2017, when the FCC overhauled Part 95. The eight formerly GMRS-only frequencies in the 462 MHz range were opened to FRS for simplex use, creating the 15 shared channels most users know today; FRS-only channels 8 through 14 stayed at half a watt, while licensed GMRS users kept up to 5 watts on the shared interstitial channels, up to 50 watts on the main channels, and exclusive access to repeaters — the feature that gives GMRS its real range.
Then came the price cut. Under the RAY BAUM’s Act, the FCC’s new application fee schedule took effect April 19, 2022: the GMRS license fee dropped from $70 to $35 for a ten-year license. No exam was ever required, and one license covers the holder’s immediate family.
Today GMRS is arguably the simplest licensed radio service in the United States — and possibly the most useful for families, outdoor groups, and emergency-preparedness plans. It started as a business band for tube rigs in the 1940s. Eight decades later, it is the service your teenager can join for the price of a pizza night.