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UK Ham Radio Reg Plans To Drop 15 min Callsign Interval and Allow Encryption
First time accepted submitter product_bucket writes A consultation published by the UK Radio Regulator Ofcom seeks views on its plan to remove the mandatory 15 minute callsign identifier interval for amateur radio licensees. The regulator also intends to permit the use of encryption by a single volunteer emergency communications organization. The consultation is open until 20th October, and views are sought by interested parties.
You can now. Just stick to the allocated ISM bands (eg WiFi).
What you can't do now is build your own transmitter without a ham license. This obviously is to prevent interference to other services.
The philosophy is simple. License the Radio or License the Operator. The Amateur Operator has passed sufficient technical barrier to ensure that they won't do stupid things and cause interference.
There is one catch however. The Amateur License excluded commercial operations. To do that you need a commercial license.
The amateur license is primarily for self education.
EM spectrum is a scarce resource, shared between all the community. If one person fills up the spectrum with high powered broadcasts, they deny others the use of that spectrum for potentially more valuable resources. You cannot buy or manufacture more electromagnetic spectrum: what we have is all there is, and more people want it than than there is space for. Would you be happy if, for example, I knocked out all WiFi and cell signals for ten miles around my house? Would you be happy if I overloaded the frequencies used by the emergency services? Would you be happy if I filled the TV frequencies with hardcore porn or a terrorist manifesto?
You have to be a sociopath not to expect there to be some sharing of limited resources.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
These are the least interesting aspects of the consultation.
1) The "how often you have to identify" thing is nearly irrelevant - it's just turned now from set occasions to the vague, and therefore hard to enforce, must-always-be-identifiable. But a few people on long ragchews didn't quite stick to the rules, while almost everyone else does. Those who continue abusing the bands will carry on not identifying anyway. As for digital/data encoding, that could always announce its callsign automatically at whatever interval - it's not like you have to do it in Morse/voice anymore, unless you want to;
2) RAYNET are nowhere near as comprehensive as US amateur radio emergency support. I don't even understand why they've been given the privilege of encryption, but I guess there's something at work here I dont know - anybody?
Now, the other shit, some of which is far more interesting:
a) The "release" (this is newspeak for "private give-away") of bands 2350-2390 Mhz and 3410-3475 MHz. This is a substantial loss of amateur allocation to the wireless leeches. This isn't being consulted on, but it's a harsh reminder of the position of the ham, and a reason for the concession in b);
b) The allocation without NoV of spectrum in the 470 kHz and 5 MHz bands. I remember a decade or so ago when 470 kHz ham radio work was pioneering, and it's nice to see it go mainstream;
c) They're updating wording on fees but STILL not charging for the licence. In Soviet Britain, this is a bad thing, because a government department which gets rich from some set of stakeholders is one which listens to those stakeholders;
d) They're making it slightly harder to transmit if you've been convicted under the WT Act. Since ham radio is the last bastion of long distance electronic free speech, any moves to make it harder to transmit are worth keeping an eye on. These amendments consider fairly specific circumstances, fortunately;
e) A few babbles about call sign usage and re-use, which please those who like picking apart (genuine, if mostly just bureaucratic) problems with license wording;
f) Some minor if decent clarifications supporting reciprocal usage and transmitting from multiple locations (direction-finding exercise, etc.). This shows that the licensing body is paying attention to detail about how licenses are actually used by hobbyists, which is pleasing.