Future proofing amateur radio

11 Dec 2023 03:40 PM

Amateur radio enthusiasts will soon enjoy greater operating freedoms under the planned amateur radio licensing changes announced by Ofcom yesterday.

Amateur radio, sometimes known as ham radio, has been an important part of wireless communications for over a century. Every amateur radio user in the UK needs a licence from Ofcom, and there are more than 100,000 amateur radio licences on issue in the UK currently.

Our June 2023 consultation, which attracted nearly 1,500 responses, set out our proposals for changes to our amateur radio licences and policies, to ensure they better meet the needs of current and future users and reflect how the hobby has evolved. We have decided to move forward with our proposals, including some modifications in light of the responses.

Overview of planned changes

To enable radio amateurs to undertake a wider range of activities we plan to:

• Update the overall licensing framework. This includes allowing anyone to operate amateur radio equipment under a licensee’s supervision and making the process of getting and using a licence simpler and clearer.
• Streamline and modernise call sign assignment by updating our call sign allocation policies in a number of areas. For example, under our plans we will make it simpler for the amateur radio community to use Special Event call signs and allow licensees to change their call sign after a five-year period. Inclusion of a Regional Secondary Locators (RSLs) will become optional for most licensees. However, licensees would be able to continue to use them if they wish.
• Adjust technical parameters. This includes increasing maximum power that radio amateurs are allowed to use in most frequency bands; and
• Provide clearer updated rules, including simplifying conditions to make them easier to understand and removing provisions not needed for spectrum management purposes.

This is all part of a broader effort to streamline, standardise and, where possible, automate elements of our licensing work.

We are now taking steps to introduce the planned changes. These will not take immediate effect and will be phased in over a two-year period. To implement many of our planned changes, we will have to vary all existing amateur radio licences. This means that many of our plans are subject to the outcome of the statutory processes for varying existing licences.

We yesterday published a General Notice which sets out the proposed licence variations. Licensees can provide representations on these proposed changes by 5:00pm on 22 January 2024. We will publish our final decision on the proposed variation in February 2024.