... the result will be that Whatever Enterprises, owned by media mogul Sir Joseph Cashbags, will just buy MW band and whatever else he can grab, and sit on it, doing what the hell he likes. If he wants to turn FM radio into, say, a band for use in his experimental guinea pig homing project for a few years, or rent it to friend and fellow tycoon Maxwell Rippermorf (for as long as they happen to be friends, anyhow) nothing you can do it.

Great idea guys. Genius.

"These will be perpetual licences which can be sold on or sub-let to other users."

I cannot imagine a more stupid proposal for a fast-changing market. Who knows what the future will bring? How can it be sensible to give control in perpetuity to a commercial enterprise?

What sane government sells a source of income that could keep the country afloat?

So, if I'm reading this right, they want to revoke a whole load of the military's spectrum, and either make the forces pay (market rates!!) for it, or sell it to other usage's.

Yeah. That's gonna happen. No, really, I'm quite sure the RAF, Army and Navy will be happy to completely rewire all the existing flight and emergency radio systems they have to a new (much) smaller frequency set, or hand over probably a good half of their annual budget to keep using what they already do. I can really see that happening.

Not to mention that Ofcom apparently also want to change all the existing non-military government spectrum allocations, like, ooh, the CAA! Yeah, I can see the CAA just saying "What? Change every single airport's flight information, arrvial, departure, tower, ground, met, and ILS, VOR data frequencies? Sure, have it done by Tuesday, and the thousands of worldwide maps charts and datasheets will be re-done by Wednesday.". Really. Yeah. Good luck with that.

"it's not secured the public trust as yet."

Oh, Ha Ha Ha.

Not only has it not secured public trust, but it has demonstrated to the public its general and total incompetence.

It has completely and utterly failed to even TRY to stamp out very obvious abuse such as broadband suppliers mis-selling severely limited broadband services and misrepresenting them as "unlimited". Could there be any greater public demonstration of incompetence than to continually turn a blind eye to an offence as self-evident as black being described as white, even despite very obvious complaints about it.

It has also watered down what could and should have been a very severe limitation of 0870 to make no significant improvement and has failed to do anything about the timewasting and expense caused by call queing and voiceprompt annoyances, both of which could easily be brought under control by prohibiting their use on anything other than on genuine freephone numbers, free to both landlines and mobiles.

Its high time we had a referendum, subject "The general British public has no confidence in OfCom and requires it to be replaced by a publicly elected and publicly accountable body". Though its entirely self-evident what the result of such a referendum would be.

Perpetuity no. Tying frequency to purpose is in most cases outdated thinking* IMHO. Leasing spectrum would retain public ownership (as it should be) and still create a market tradable commodity (like physical property leases).

*Having said that I think we should leave FM radio well alone, tellys can be converted to digital but radios can't. Think of the mountain of landfill we're going to create overnight. Plus, I love London's pirate radio scene ;-)

Roger Heathcote

I thought it didn't really matter how good a standard was, but what’s important is that there is a standard. GMS wouldn't exist at all if they didn't make it a standard all over Europe.

Roger Heathcote writes a few posts above here:

"Tying frequency to purpose is in most cases outdated thinking."

To my knowledge it is next to impossible to design hardware without knowing which frequency it is going to use. I don't know how it works today, but most GSM phones didn't earlier have the ability to work both in Europe and USA. The only way they make a phone work both places is to have two transmitters in it, one for each band. If you take that regulation away all equipment will end up costing way more since you, either have to make it specific for the country or even city that the consumer lives in, or have to smack loads of additional circuitry inside it to cope with the different frequencies it has to operate on.

The worst part however is that a company may at any given time render your gadget useless since they can decide independently that will change the use of their spectrum to some new gadget.

Since I am pro regulation, regulations goes against the free market and the opposite of the free market is communism, I'll get my red coat.

It IS outdated thinking in MOST cases. Come up with some killer apps we don't already have some spectrum for and I'd consider ringfencing some spectrum for them, but unless you've got something more useful than what we've now got i.e. DAB, DTV, voice & general purpose wireless ip networking) then I see no point restricting what spectrum can be used for.

MrK - "The worst part however is that a company may at any given time render your gadget useless since they can decide independently that will change the use of their spectrum to some new gadget."

Yes that would suck, like the government deciding to turn off FM, which is why we would do well to allocate a good chunk of this spectrum to the aforementioned general purpose IP networking and maybe the government should maintain a bit for a state backed ip multicating system.

Don't think I'm not pro regulation BTW, there's many industries that need regulating inside out. Applying regulations evenly accross a healthy market doesn't stop it being meaningfully 'free', allowing monopolies and oligopolies and enormous inbalances of power does that. The so called 'free marketeers' you read about are nothing of the sort - Adam Smith would puke if he met the 'Adam Smith Institute' or 'The Competition Commission'

The miltary do indeed have more guns,

For now.

This government (underfunding, completely not knowing what they are on about.) and EU legislation (Tanks have to submit to the EU guidelines on gases) will mean we won't for long. so Ofcom in a few years might win that fight.

Ofcom like all other quango's are pointless wastes of tax payers money. But so is parliament, I am with jeremy clarkson on this.

As You may have read. We of the "Luvvies" brigade are still under the threat of losing our Radio Microphone frequencies or worse still, having the licence fee jacked up to some astronomical amount(Imagine a plumber having to pay £1000 per year, per wrench!). TV is freelancerised these days with individuals owning their own equipment, competition is strong and margins are small(Yeah I know.Boo-Hoo!). So it's not like in the past when the BBC or ITV would find a budget from somewhere to renew their fleet of radio mics.Don't believe all you hear about Techs earning big salaries either(more Boo-Hoo). So the appearance of Brucie with a mike with a cable is odds on!

Talking of plumbing, any openings.......?i

Your report seems to completely ignore radio amateurs, who now have lifetime licences to use lots of bands all over the place - from 175KHz to 40GHz+

This is a vital market segment believe it or not - they're the people who first thought to use wireless for sending of pictures (TV); they thought of using satellites to relay radio signals; they're the ones who gave us FM. They're also the experts in efficient use of the spectrum (SSB vs AM anyone), and the ingenuity behind advances in radio technology.

More than just some sad old gits yacking away as a hobby!

Yep this "luvvie" is a Ham too! 100Watt ssb radio Mic? Naaaaah!

The icon is clearly a crossed out Mic!

Basically Ofcom have far too much faith in the 'free market' forces delivering good things for us, really Thatcher's children at play. Just take a look at US television to see how that works in practice...

Some things do need more freedom, so an easy way of changing band use with permission is a good idea. A free for all, except in some limited de-regulated bands, most certainly is not.

Incidentally, the success of GSM was not down to a gov department making up the correct technology. They allowed the 'market' to come up with the technical solution, but mandated that only one would be used. Unlike the USA where the much poorer VHS vs Betamax 'free market' process has resulted in incompatible handsets and worse service than EU (and most of the rest of the world).

Bollocks to the Radio Amateurs! A very silly hobby indeed. 73's

Well researched and well written IMO

Completely makes up for that silly N95 maps article, really ;-)

All snide comments aside, the geek in me enjoyed reading this, even while fearing for the future of European roaming (you have to suspect that the chance for roaming revenue will act as a motivating factor to keep the possibility alive)