Radio Licensing

Note that this contents is an unapproved draft and DOES NOT REPRESENT THE SETTLED VIEW OF CAMBRIDGESHIRE RAYNET. It may be wrong, incomplete or deleted on review.

Radio signals can travel long distances, so misused or poorly adjusted equipment can cause disruption to commercially important or even safety-of-life messaging. For this reason every jurisdiction employs a licensing regime.

In the UK there are some limited uses which are licensed under general terms provided that the equipment conforms to standards - WiFi, CB radio, PMR446 for example (see this page for a more detailed discussion). Licences are also widely issued for commercial equipment installed by professionals. Examples of these are wide-ranging and numerous but one obvious example might be local taxi firm radios. Another is your mobile phone which operates under the terms of the mobile operators' licences.

Leisure and commercial users of radios for shipping and aviation will be familiar with the need to qualify for an operator's certificate to ensure competence. In both those cases the certificates apply to the use of equipment which meets strict type-approval being operated by the now-qualified and certified individual.

For private use, including leisure and experimentation, licences are also issued to qualified individuals under the terms of 'Amateur' licensing. Amateur licencees come from all walks of life, some with an entirely leisure interest, others who work professionally in telecommunications and who wish to use radio outside of their employment.

Amateur licences are issued on a strictly non-commercial basis, this is the origin of the 'amateur' term. The terms explicitly permit the use of the equipment in conjunction with the Emergency Services, statutory authorities and other designated organisations who may need to respond in civil emergencies. In some cases licensees are allowed (even encouraged) to build and use equipment of novel design, outside of type-approval rules.[*1]

A good explanation of UK Amateur Radio licensing can be found at Essex Ham[2], which it would be pointless to duplicate here. In essence there are three levels of licence ranging from Foundation to Full, each with varying privileges. Essex Ham offers free online training for the Foundation licence which takes only a few hours of study - after paying for and passing your test, you are can then apply for a free lifetime licence. Essex Ham claim an enviable pass rate!

You don't need a radio licence to join Raynet and assist us, although it's very helpful if you have one, as without a licence radio use must be supervised. We can help you with mentoring on the way and would very much encourage those interested to become licensed as part of working with us, giving you a further qualification to add to your CV. For most Raynet purposes a Foundation licence is all that is needed [*2].

The licensing body in the UK is OFCOM. OFCOM publishes a substantial PDF document[3] providing authoritative details about Amateur Licensing.

References

  1. ^ Wikipedia entry on history of amateur radio
  2. ^ Essex ham radio licence training course
  3. ^ Ofcom pdf document on guidance for amateur radio licensees

Footnotes

  1. ^ Amateur Licensing is at least in part intended to encourage experimentation with equipment and uses of radio outside of narrow commercial exploitation without needing an explicit researcher's licence. There is more about this on Wikipedia[1]
  2. ^ A foundation licence limits the power of the equipment that may be used. This may restrict unsupervised use of some of our equipment but this is not typically a serious limitation if there are also Full licensees present to supervise. If using high power equipment, the knowledge of a Full licensee, especially with regards to safety, is no bad thing.