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@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compare the list of callsigns with the IP address registrations I managed, and remove addresses for callsigns that are no longer valid.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:
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%3E
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@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 afterthey
> were initially verified. Worth noting here… call-sign verification is going to get moredifficult
for some of us in the future. Here in Australia, amateur radiorecently
moved (for better or worse) to a class-licensing system wherein theACMA
no longer manages the assignment of call-signs.
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