17 May
2024
17 May
'24
12:52 a.m.
Just to elaborate on an important point:
In the UK, due to data protection laws, there is absolutely no way a third
party can validate that a given person holds a given callsign.
In suspect this will also be the case across large parts of Europe.
Tom
On Thu, 16 May 2024 at 09:32, Ellis Birt via 44net <44net(a)mailman.ampr.org>
wrote:
Hi, in the UK, licences and callsigns are still issued
by Ofcom. It is
predominantly an online process with a PDF "validation document". It is a
shared system with maritime and other similar licences.
Other callsigns, including beacons, repeaters and data stations over 5W
ERP are issued by the RSGB ETCC and are listed on uprepeater.net. There
are a few MB9xxx callsigns managed by Raynet (Radio Amateur's emergency
Network) for temporary repeaters. That may end up also covering >5W ERP
temporary data stations.
One potential issue is that in the next year or so it will be possible to
change one's callsign once every 5 years and vacated callsigns will, after
a 5 year 'cooling off period', be returned to the pool.
Callsigns beginning with a 2 are to be phased out in favour of M8 and M9
callsigns. Holders of the '2' series callsigns will be able to change to
their equivalent M callsign e.g. 2E0ABC will become M8ABC and 2E1ABC will
become M9ABC. This will be voluntary and eventually the M8 and M9 callsign
reservations will expire.
Just to muddy the waters there are the (now optional) regional secondary
locators so I can be GE7SAI in England, GW7SAI in Wales and GM7SAI in
Scotland (there are others).
HTH
73 de Ellis G7SAI
On Thu, 16 May 2024 at 08:33, Rob PE1CHL via 44net <44net(a)mailman.ampr.org>
wrote:
Here in the Netherlands, the official authority
still manages the
callsigns, although
we do not have a "license" anymore, only a "registration". The
amateur
bands have been
put in the license-free category with the exception that you need to
register a callsign
to use those bands, and with the note that to register a callsign you
first need to
pass an exam. Sounds similar in result, but judicially it is completely
different.
The exams have already been outsourced, it could happen with the
registrations as well.
Also, under the European privacy rulings, access to registered callsign
information is
very limited. There is no way at all to obtain holder information for a
callsign, the
only thing you can verify is if a given callsign is currently "in use",
or has been used
in the past and is thus not available for allocation. This is done via a
webpage that
has a low limit on usage. There is no way anymore to download a list of
all issued
callsigns and their status. I used that to compare the list of callsigns
with the
IP address registrations I managed, and remove addresses for callsigns
that are no longer
valid. Cannot do that anymore. Before, someone ran a weekly job to try
all possible
callsigns on that webpage and compiled a list, but this was detected and
now it cannot
be done anymore due to the rate limiting.
Anyway, it is quite easy to fake the status of one's license holdings. I
think that
it is even more difficult for a random outsider (someone handling
tickets) than it was
for me personally, as of course when I got a request that seemed a bit
fishy I had lots
of ways to see what was going on. E.g. I have seen two cases where
people claimed to
have a license and requested a BGP-routed /24, but from some research it
turned out they
or their son was running a small webhosting company. I think that will
be more difficult
do find that kind of problems because local coordinators are not involved
anymore.
Rob
On 2024-05-16 06:38, Peter Hannay via 44net wrote:
difficult
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Just a quick correction to the below, ACMA does
indeed still manage
call signs, they don't manage licences for individual
amateurs though.
The call sign register is here: https://www.acma.gov.au/call-signs <
https://www.acma.gov.au/call-signs>
I'm not sure how we can prove ownership of a particular call sign
anymore
though.
How is this currently handled in the UK? I believe they currently have
a similar
system to Australia.
Cheers
Peter VK6HAX
On Thu, 16 May 2024, 8:00 am Stuart Longland VK4MSL via 44net, <
44net(a)mailman.ampr.org <mailto:44net@mailman.ampr.org>> wrote:
On 16/5/24 00:07, Razvan via 44net wrote:
> I also have all the verifications (Callsign, Email, Mobile,
Address) and
> I'm totaling 45 points.
>
> From what I see on my end they are expiring exactly 1 year after
they
were
initially verified.
Worth noting here… call-sign verification is going to get more for some of us in the future. Here in
Australia, amateur radio
recently
moved (for better or worse) to a
class-licensing system wherein the
ACMA
no longer manages the assignment of
call-signs.
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