Washington - Aug 15, 2007 - The FCC's final rules on IBOC have been published in the Federal Register. With this publication, the details of the second report and order from May 2007 will go into effect. There are three items in those rules that now have time lines. These all take effect on Sept. 14, 2007:

• AM stations can commence night-time IBOC operations.
• FM stations can multicast without obtaining special temporary authority from the FCC.
• FM stations can use separate antennas for hybrid IBOC operation without obtaining special temporary authority from the FCC.

The FCC is still seeking some comments on various aspects, and Mexico has recently made some protests about IBOC, so more information will likely be released by the FCC at a later time.

The complete final rules are available at this link.