Ofcom licensing consultation 2023
Ofcom are proposing to make a large number of changes to amateur licensing and have published a consultation document with details. You can respond to the consultation anytime until 5pm on September 2023.
Here are a few of the proposals:
- Regional (ie UK nations etc) identifiers to be optional
- Licensees able to change callsign
- Only one callsign per licensee (eg lower level callsigns have to be handed back when progressing through licence levels)
- Increases to power limits – 20w for foundation licensees, 100w for intermediate. For full licensees 1kw in bands where we are primary users (all HF bands except 60m and 30m plus the bottom 1 MHz of 6m and all of 2m)
- Foundation licensees can make their own equipment
- Airborne QRP (0.5 W eirp) in many bands (this seems to be the bands where we’re primary users)
Some of the proposals are non-contentious but others could be problematic. eg making regional identifiers optional raises the question of whether the UK nations continue to exist as separate entities for awards/contests & QSLing. What happens to calls used without the identifier – do they default to England? Or does England become UK??
Losing second and third callsigns may cause problems for amateurs using different calls for contests and awards. QSL cards may need replacing too.
You can find the consultation here:
