New Licence Conditions

Folks - you may be interested to see this exchange of e-mail that have taken place today between myself, HQ and the Chairman of the Norfolk Club. It may help answer some questions:

1. There are many temporary staff at Ofcom dealing with enquiries.

2. There are printed copies of the new terms and conditions in existence – the print is being received now (by Ofcom) but none have been despatched yet.

3. Ofcom wanted to run a dual licensing system for the fist year (that's to say they wanted to despatch the new licence and new terms to amateurs as their existing license came up for renewal).

4. RSGB said that was confusing and insisted the approach was dropped. Ofcom ultimately agreed that it would be confusing and dropped the idea.

5. The enormity of this despatch operation is now being realised and the plan is to begin despatches this month. Depending how smoothly that goes this will determine when the second and subsequent tranches are sent.

Ofcom's aim is to do the first batch of three months renewals i.e. January to March as soon as possible to test the waters and, depending on the influx of calls and work, will then proceed to the next batch. (This is why people are being given the option to register on the site and download their own documents to get ahead of the game.)

6. To get the current licence and new terms - use the link http://www.ofcom.org.uk/radiocomms/ifi/licensing/
classes/amateur/Licences/ and click the "lifetime sample amateur ... document:. The first pages are the licence document (pages 1, 2 and 3); and the Terms and Conditions follow on pages 4 to 24. Currently this is marked "Sample" but a clean version will (apparently) be loaded onto the site soon (and may have already happened).

7. To obtain a printed version of the new Terms and Conditions" (i.e. for training purposes etc.), the only option (currently) is to download from the site and produce the number of copies needed.

8. What this means is that anyone currently holding a licence and does not need a renewal yet should work under the old BR68 + NOV until their new document arrives. OR register on-line before their license is due to be renewed and then use the new license conditions applicable to the license level (i.e. foundation/intermediate/advanced). Also, if anyone was to change their address and do this on-line as Ofcom prefers, a licence will be updated and made ready for printing in PDF format.

Incidentally, I have registered on the Ofcom site and it was very straightforward - I am now waiting for my password. Also I know that people at HQ are rigorously testing the system. I hope this information helps!!

73 de Phill

Ofcom Amateur Licence Registration page
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/licensing/olc/

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