M0HPI - OFCOM Amateur Radio Licence Review 2023/2024

Consultation background and response

The OFCOM Plan of Work for 2023/2024 included a review of amateur radio licencing. The majority of the proposed changes were, I think, very sensible. It included sensible things like:

• Limited aeronautical mobile (which has been illegal up to this point),
• Increase in transmit power for all licensees on some bands (for full licensees up to 1kW on primary bands). This has been in place for a while now and the world has not come to an end yet!
• Unlicensed operators can now do full QSOs under the supervision of a licensed ham
• Foundation licensees can now build their own equipment and have access to 2.4GHz and 5GHz

OFCOM launched the consultation 23 June 2023 with a deadline of 4 September 2023. Below are links to the OFCOM framework document as well as my response.

Relevant OFCOM links

• 11 Dec 2023: Statement: Updating the amateur radio licensing framework.
• 23 Jun 2023: OFCOM Framework document.

My response