[LEAPSECS] WWVB receivers, legal time, WWV

[Gerard Ashton]

The idea that consumer grade WWVB receivers will become obsolete 
supposes that legal time will be a fixed (except for daylight savings 
time) offset from UTC, and UTC continues to include leap seconds. If 
WWVB were to broadcast the proposed TI instead of UTC, the old receivers 
would display TI-based time, which would gradually depart from the legal 
UTC.

The problem with this solution does not lie in the WWVB receivers; 
considering the uses to which they are put, they will fail before the 
error becomes a problem. The problems are

(1) No system will be able to determine legal time without outside 
updates every 6 months or so.

(2) There is no reason to think systems will be revised to carefully 
handle events for which the legal time must be determined to subsecond 
accuracy in the vicinity of a leap second. Leap seconds will still 
happen in legal time and continue to cause many of the problems they do 
today.

Also, what about the voice announcements on WWV? Since it gives voice 
announcements and also machine readable time, should it broadcast TI or UTC?

Gerry Ashton