I reckon that there's a round of budget cuts coming, and Ofcom doesn't want to be one of the departments getting the axe. But look at Case Study 2, the fine for illegal broadcasting was 250 quid, I bet Ofcom spent 30-100k just pursuing that case, they're chasing the most minor and rare type of offence here.

Ofcom's budget was £126 million a year.

Look at Case study 1 and 2 from 2005 and 2006, they had to go back 3 years to get their examples of this crime. Each one is a petty crime. They have a budget of £126 million for this.

More money has been spent on that leaflet warning about illegal broadcasters than is received in fines from illegal broadcasters....

Then there's the interference problem, now we're all digital and the Fireservice can use the mobile phone band as a backup, there's just not such a big problem there any more. Indeed it makes sense that we drop the custom bands for the emergency services and simply give the fireservice a way to ensure capacity on the phone network. Then free up those bands for other things.

What are they using now? Still using analogue transmitters? Surely not.

"The FM band needs to be liberalised so you don't need a six figure bank balance to get a licence, especially with the advent of digital and online radio..."

Surely if it was "liberalised" then it would be those with the biggest bank balance who would be running the highest powers in city centres squeezing out everyone else. Also likely to be criminals connections to many of these liberalised stations.

I presume the (professional?) photographer who took the picture of the antenna is ex-Channel 4 from the way he is incapable of holding his camera level.

So how much is spent by enforcement in the UK?

I'm curious what % of the annual budget does it add up to. I reckon you're one of the most over policed countries, more petty regulators, more council community officers than elsewhere. So many 'health and safety' inspectors it makes you sick. Here's Ofcom spending hundreds of millions preventing hundred of quids worth of CB radio style transmissions. There's the proposal to add Internet monitoring and regulation to that.

How does it stack up if you add all these enforcement agencies up?

No longer a nation of shopkeepers I reckon, a nation of regulators perhaps?

Ermm aren't Ofcom missing half the story. Those log-periodic aerials are horizontally polarised. I'll just run my pirate station vertically polarised. :-) Maybe if they were more than half competent they'd add a discone to catch VP signals as well.

Why not? Fireservice gets the call from a member of the public on their MOBILE PHONE 'there's a fire here', they need more staff, so they grab their phone and call the firemen at home on their MOBILE PHONES... 'come quick we need more firemen'....

I bet they use mobile phones now, since it would be next to impossible for them to get their own transmission towers in as many places the mobile phone networks, I bet they all have a mobile phone with them for backup when they lose coverage.

"I presume the (professional?) photographer who took the picture of the antenna is ex-Channel 4 from the way he is incapable of holding his camera level."

Maybe it was level and the room was wonky. The guy on the right looks like he is holding on.

""I presume the (professional?) photographer who took the picture of the antenna is ex-Channel 4 from the way he is incapable of holding his camera level."

Maybe it was level and the room was wonky. The guy on the right looks like he is holding on."

I'm think they're just using that angle to hide the receding hairlines of the subjects.

When Ofcom scan the UK on our behalf then they should make the data available. I can understand that commercial companies may have this data and can't be expected to share it. However if Ofcom are doing it on our behalf I think it's wrong for them to sell it commerially.

Why do I think they will do this? Well I was working with the Ministry of Agreculture, Food and Fisheries at one time. They were publishing a CD-ROM with data about crop storage and I was helping with putting it onto CD. They said they would have to charge £15 per CD to cover costs. I said why not put it up as a website then it costs people nothing and probably cost you only a few quid per month.

They rejected that because they were trying to make money. No one bought their CD so they made no money. And no one saw the data which had cost quite a lot to compile. A little bit more money spent could have put the data to good use for the people of the UK.

These government agencies forget who they work for.

By the way, Radio pirates say they have guns. The police won't help them protect their business so they have to do so themselves. On the whole they use the spectrum sensibly but there will always be people who deliberately interfere with others radio signals.

"They have never been on the side of the public; they are institutionally inept and they impede development of new services." couldnt agree more!

£126 million for a regulator that enforces sweet FA, they will spend money on the survey, spend money talking about it, spend money woking out how to sell it off, and then do nothing else with it and blame another regulator / department.

Please can we have a new communications regulator, pretty please.

I'd much rather have the fire service/police on a combination of both a dedicated radio system such as TETRA and mobile phone. What you forget is that out in rural areas mobile phone coverage is patchy at best, and there are TETRA masts going up in areas not covered by any mobile network

Only if mobile phones work and the band is not being fully utilised.

A fire at a building with the local mast could well put it out of action, the '7/7' bombings caused the phone system to fall over due to volume of calls.

I like the situation here in the states better... it was found like 20 years ago that the FCC doesn't actually have any enforcement powers. So, they can confiscate your radio gear, but the sole consequence of not paying any fines they levy (for instance, fines for not having an FCC license) is... you might not be able to get an FCC license.

126 million gets us a lobbist for the telecomms industry, paid for by us.We also get excessive TV regulation, far more than is wanted. The government generates income in selling of parts of the spectrum but we pay in the end.

The consumer just gets a raw deal.

For 126 million a year maybe someone could define "unlimited", enforce the code of practice they insisted upon in 2005? make them honour contract?

The other regulators manage it on far less of a budget.