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IP address registrations I managed, and remove addresses for callsigns that are no longer
valid.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>
>
> 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 after they
> > were initially verified.
>
> Worth noting here… call-sign verification is going to get more difficult
> 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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