Ofcom Licence Changes 2024 Summary
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- Опубликовано: 26 фев 2024
- Ofcom announced some major changes to the amateur radio licence in February 2024. In this short video, we review the changes and answer some common questions about what's new in 2024
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Very useful, Pete... Thanks for the explanation in layman's terms.
We ran our own poll 😂 well done Pete
Thanks Craig. Trying to spin a six month delay as a positive was “bold” 🤣
Great info there Pete, thanks
Think I'll wait until things have settled before embarking on this journey!
I'm currently studying for the Foundation licence, I'm aware of both new and old regulations, but thanks to HamTrain I now know that I should be giving the "old" answer to actually pass! (So yeah I count myself in the majority that disagree with the RSGB)
RSGB has published an explanation of the 1 September start date from their perspective in the Examination Announcements part of their website.
There was always going to be a delay between the new licence terms and conditions being published and the exams changing to reflect the new terms and conditions. RSGB had planned for the new terms to be published in early January so that they had time to publish the new syllabus during January and give three months' notice of the changes to start in April. However, Ofcom's timetable slipped such that the initial general notice was not published until December meaning the representation period stretched into the middle of January. RSGB were aware of some representations that might have required syllabus changes if Ofcom had accepted them (in fact, Ofcom rejected all the representations calling for a change in policy, but did agree with many of the suggestions for clarification and correction of errors), which was a further challenge to finalising the syllabus As we all know, the new licence terms and conditions were published on 21 February and took effect immediately.
Realistically, RSGB needs six weeks at a minimum to reflect on the final version of the terms, receive any representations on the syllabus and finalise a new version. That will take them until at least the end of March, meaning the earliest that the exams could have reflected the new terms was 1 July. In the event, they have chosen to change the exams from 1 September, supposedly to reflect the low number of exams taken over the summer but also, I suspect, to ensure that there will be no further delays.
I think what has happened was largely a failure of communication. RSGB should have been clear as soon as Ofcom's consultation timetable slipped that the exams were not going to change from 1 April and that we were looking at a minimum of 4.5 months from the publication of the final terms and conditions to a syllabus change being implemented.
As someone who has studied law, I know that it is common for law exams and assessments to lag changes in the law by some time. Exams and assessments are often set on "the law as of " or "the law as in the latest edition of the textbook", not the law as it stands on the day of the exam. If you can understand and interpret the law at a given point in time, you should be able to understand the subsequent updates.
The amateur radio licence has changed significantly since I was first licensed in the mid-1990s. Like everyone else, I have had to adapt to the changes as they took place. When I was first licensed there was a full licence with the need to pass a 12wpm Morse test to operate below 30MHz, and there was a Novice licence that was very restricted with a 5wpm Morse test to operate below 30MHz. Logging was compulsory when at your main station address or portable. Suffixes for portable, mobile and maritime mobile were compulsory. There were no 2000m, 630m or 60m bands for amateurs. 40m only went up to 7100kHz. You had to pay an annual licence fee of something like £12 for a new validation document to be posted to you each year. Some of the microwave allocations were, however, broader than is allowed today.
Training for what is now the Intermediate licence has changed a great deal since I was a Novice Instructor in the early noughties. The original Novice licensees had privileges that were far inferior to current Foundation privileges - for example, they were not allowed to operate on 2m and they were only allowed 5W input power to the antenna. In practice, the first Novice (B) licensees could only use 6m and 70cm - the higher bands they were allowed to use were prohibitively expensive to access and gave very limited possibilities.
I understand and agree with your frustrations that it feels awkward and counterproductive to teach something that is now outdated and wrong. I guess that your slide was about Foundation licensees building transmitting equipment, which was not allowed until the recent changes. However, the new terms are more permissive in almost every way. We just have to deal with where we are now in the most sensible way possible, trying to prepare candidates for operating under the current terms once they pass. At least we know for certain what those new terms will be now and can train them accordingly. We can also begin to prepare to train candidates for the new syllabus when it comes into force later this year.
Thanks for all you do, especially in running your valued courses.
[Full disclosure: I am an RSGB member and a volunteer at the National Radio Centre. However, I am writing here in a purely personal capacity, not on behalf of RSGB. I am not a member of the RSGB Examination Standards Committee and have no more insight into what is happening than anyone else; I am only interpreting the public statements that have been made.]
Hi David - I read the statement, but the problem is, the facts that the RSGB are stating, aren't actually correct.
The June 2023 Ofcom consultation document stated results by "end of December" (pages 6 and 58) and the notice was released 11 December. Why is RSGB saying that Ofcom slipped? They actually delivered early!
The presentation given by ESC in August assumed variations would come in on 1st Apr 2024, but they actually came in on 21 Feb - again, early… no evidence of slippage.
As the dates were well defined by Ofcom last June, and nailed down by Ofcom last December, I don't get why RSGB was a) caught off guard, or b) accusing Ofcom of slipping.
The draft syllabus was released by RSGB on 18th December. Apart from the increase to 25w and some maritime changes, very little has changed, and certainly not enough to require an extra 8-and-a-half month's delay. A reminder that almost all of the changes are just to one part of the syllabus - licence conditions, with only one change to Operating Procedures - this is not a major update, and has no impact on the technical, transmitter, propagation, antenna, EMC, and safety sections of the syllabus.
RSGB has asked for an extra 3 months June to August, as "it's a quiet time for exams". We ran 6 busy courses in June to August 2023 with 540 students.
As for trying to spin this as positive, there was no up-front consultation with the training community. We're estimating over 1,000 students will be impacted, and this is already causing student confusion. Public polls and online comments are already reflecting that teaching the old licence conditions for 6 months, then expecting students to learn the new ones, is not great. 3 months from the December notice would have been reasonable, as would the target of 1st April.
Last year, after 4 months of work, a draft syllabus was released by RSGB. Our group reviewed it and found a substantial amount of errors. We submitted a 3-page document outlining these errors back in December, and we're still awaiting feedback. Their comment that feedback indicated that "more work was needed on the syllabus". I suspect this, plus internal ESRG slippage, is the real reason for wanting an extension.
Attempting to blame this on a non-existent slippage by Ofcom is a little low. Poor comms from RSGB to its volunteer tutors on this matter is also frustrating and unhelpful - for example, we still don't have a date for the actual release of the syllabus.
Had there been some honest discussion with the training community up-front, there could have been some mitigation, and some planning for the April-September crossover, but as per our group's initial comment, there was seemingly no interest in such discussion or cooperation with those of us who work hard to deliver courses and provide timely and relevant information to new hams.
Pete
@@EssexhamUkIt is an uncomfortable situation, with RSGB seemingly having expectations of Ofcom that were not met, coupled with a lack of transparency with the trainers and the broader amateur community.
It seems that RSGB ESRG expected Ofcom to publish the consultation responses by the end of November 2023 and the final licence text by the end of December 2023 - though where they got these expectations from is unclear, as you note. Ofcom's June 2023 consultation document only promised a response to the consultation by the end of December 2023. As you note, this response was published within that timeline in the middle of December. After the General Notice was published in December, Ofcom was legally required to allow a period for representations to be made before their final decisions were published and implemented.
For whatever reason, someone in the exams side of RSGB seems to have been operating under the misapprehension that Ofcom were running to a faster timetable than Ofcom had promised publicly when the April 2024 syllabus change date was suggested. Exactly what was decided by whom and when is unclear: there's nothing in the ESC 2023 report other than a mention of future licence changes, and the only ESRG minutes on the RSGB website are from 2020 and then, in bullet point form only once the delay to September had clearly been decided upon, a summary of four meetings in January 2024. From a transparency point of view, this is not good.
In retrospect, it might have been better if RSGB had said something like, "We expect exams will change to reflect the new licence terms and conditions 3-6 months after the final terms are published".
Most of those involved with ESRC and ESC are volunteers. Without the hard work of many volunteers in setting up and running the RCF and then RSGB exam systems, the amateur radio community would have been in a right mess when City and Guilds gave notice that they would cease offering amateur radio exams. Of course, without the hard work of those involved in training, there would be few candidates for the exams.
Item 13 of the RSGB Board December 2023 minutes reports an item from the RSGB Company Secretary pointing out that the RSGB Bylaws require minutes of committee meetings but holds that this requirement appears to be inappropriate for the way that some committees now work. It seems that the forthcoming RSGB AGM will be asked to delete this requirement from the Bylaws. However, it was stressed that committees did need to feed back to members, perhaps via the AGM reports. Maybe the issues that have arisen here around transparency, both with decisions being made and then being presented as a fait accompli, and especially the discrepancy between the ESRC statement and published Ofcom documents, is something that you / Essex Ham can take up with the RSGB Company Secretary.
We cannot undo the questionable decisions of the past. It may well be that people - most of whom are volunteers - are doing their best in the situation we are now in. It is more important that the syllabus and question pool changes are correct rather than rushed. However, transparency matters, especially when that transparency has a significant effect on the (mostly volunteer) trainers and the candidates for exams.
This is offered with respect to the many volunteers (and the much smaller number of RSGB staff members) involved on all sides of this situation - the trainers, the members of ESRC and ERC and, indeed, the RSGB Board. I do hope that lessons can be learned.
Cynical me suspects that RSGB have a stock of old syllabus exam manuals they'd rather sell than pulp. They've got form for selling older, out-of-date editions through their webstore when the description is careful to avoid specifying the edition you'll receive.
What's the reasoning behind gateways being limited to 5W ERP but repeaters being 25W ERP?
Hi great videos most interesting, will you be updating your training videos it include the new changes?
New exams start from 1st September. Until then, the old material and books still apply. New material will be released closer to September
If you pass the exam today, can you use the new powers / relaxed rules once they come in?
Yes, and the changes are now in effect
Hi Pete,
Thanks for the update. Do we need to contact the RSGB direct to swap current intermediate call sign to the new M8/M9 ones?
Cheers!
Best regards, 73
Manny
2E0HJN
It’s likely that when Ofcom is ready to roll out this change, you’ll be able to change callsign on the Ofcom website. Callsigns are managed by Ofcom, not RSGB
@EssexhamUk of course. Cheers!
🙂👍
Any suffix. Only four should be used:/m, /p, /a and /qrp. the rest is just stupid. Taking the RSL off and adding a "e" is also stupid.
Out of interest, did you respond to last year’s Ofcom consultation on this? Very few people actually opposed this change as part of the consultation
This vid is appreciated, thank you - 2E0EJS