Remote ID applies to any drone that is required to be registered, and to any drone that is registered, including recreational, Part 107, and public-safety flights. The signal is a local radio broadcast. It is not an internet upload of the flight to the FAA.
The registration trigger
The FAA's Remote ID page states the compliance line directly. Pilots who are required to register their drone, or who have registered it, must operate in accordance with 14 CFR Part 89. A drone flown for recreation, for business, or for public safety is covered once it is registered or required to be registered. The rule is not limited to aircraft heavier than 55 pounds. It is not limited to flights within some radius of an airport. Those two limits are common wrong answers, and neither one is the trigger.
Part 107 registration is per aircraft. Each aircraft gets its own registration number. A recreational flyer may use one registration number across a listed inventory. That fleet shortcut is not how Part 107 registration works, including for a small aircraft that would have been under the recreational weight exception. The marking, the fee, and the three-year term are on the aircraft registration page. Registering the aircraft does not, by itself, finish the Remote ID duty. The registration record and the broadcast are separate steps. FAADroneZone asks for the Remote ID serial number when you add the device so the records can be tied together.
Some operations can be authorized to deviate, for purposes such as aeronautical research, through an FAA Remote ID authorization. The purpose alone is not a self-granted exception.
A broadcast, not an upload
Remote identification is the ability of a drone in flight to provide identification and location that other parties can receive. The path is radio frequency, in the same family as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth signals. A person nearby with a receiver can pick the broadcast up. The aircraft is not streaming the track live into an FAA database over the internet. The aircraft is also not merely storing a private log for you to download after landing and call that Remote ID.
That is the answer when a client asks whether the drone "uploads its flights to the government over the internet." The accurate reply is that Remote ID is a local radio-frequency broadcast. Nearby receivers can hear it. There is no internet hop to an FAA server in the basic rule, and there is no "it only sits on the drone until we plug it in" version that satisfies Part 89.
How you comply is one of three paths: a Standard Remote ID aircraft that broadcasts from the factory, a Remote ID broadcast module attached to an aircraft that does not, or flight inside an FAA-Recognized Identification Area. The message elements, the visual-line-of-sight condition on a module, and what to do when the broadcast stops are written out on the Remote ID page. This page does not restate that procedure. If you are choosing a module, the broadcast module page is the companion.
What the compliance label is
A Remote ID compliance label on a Standard Remote ID drone or on a broadcast module identifies that the product was produced under an accepted declaration of compliance. Part 89 labeling is a design and production requirement. It tells you the aircraft or the module was built to the Remote ID rule the manufacturer declared. It does not grant permission to fly in controlled airspace. It does not prove that the person holding the transmitter has a Remote Pilot Certificate. It does not replace the registration mark.
Before you rely on a label, verify the exact aircraft or module, including the model and serial range, against the FAA-accepted Declaration of Compliance listing. A sticker on a similar-looking product is not the same check. A label also does not stand in for the airspace authorization a Part 107 flight may still need, and it is not a Part 107 certificate.
The trap
The questions split three ways, and each wrong answer sounds administrative. "Only drones over 55 pounds" and "only within 5 miles of an airport" both invent a trigger the rule does not use. "It streams to an FAA database" and "it only stores a log on the aircraft" both misstate a radio broadcast. "The label lets me enter Class C" and "the label proves I hold a remote pilot certificate" both treat a production mark as an approval it does not give. Registration status decides who must comply. The broadcast is local. The label identifies production under a declaration of compliance, and you still confirm the listing.
Try the registration and Remote ID items on the free practice test. The early operations lessons are in the course.