That’s not how the mandarins who set up OFCOM see it. You’re welcome to challenge them but you are customer of OFCOM’s services.
You never know… Ofcom might be a bit more flexible than the Treasury 
From the Business Dictionary:
1.General: A party that receives or consumes products (goods or services) and has the ability to choose between different products and suppliers. See also buyer.
Even Mandarins can be wrong.
Brian
Ah, but… if the existing prefixes were retained by an independent Scotland, then we would surely be obliged to use GM/home call or MM/home call (and possibly a suffix) as per the norm elsewhere where 2 licensing authorities are involved. So you might end up as MM/G4MD/P anyway… 
You’re are welcome to remain marching out of step with everyone else for as long as it pleases you Brian. But you are a customer of OFCOM’s services whether you like the modern usage of the term or not. Usage which started around the lates 1980’s and goes hand in hand with terms like “internal market” etc.
Gerry
You will need set off an hour earlier on your trips to Scotland to account for the queues at the border checkpoints.
I’m sure the Mandarins would say that even Dictionaries can be wrong Brian 
Like someone used to say, the future’s Orange
Brian[quote=“MM0FMF, post:85, topic:8067, full:true”]
You’re are welcome to remain marching out of step with everyone else for as long as it pleases you Brian. But you are a customer of OFCOM’s services whether you like the modern usage of the term or not. Usage which started around the lates 1980’s and goes hand in hand with terms like “internal market” etc.
[/quote]
Yet if that useage is not recognised by the Business Dictionary, of all things, how valid is it? Just media speak rather than official definition? Mandarins are usually more careful of their definitions than that!
Brian
Brian
From observation of the real world, the answer to Alice’s question is yes.
The RSGB has updated its website. If you’re interested, see http://rsgb.org/main/operating/licensing-novs-visitors/licence-review/
and the rest… that’s if they actually allow us in. Hopefully Andy can swing it for us, but if not I am sure Jack will sort it - in exchange for a few “Completes”.
That serves only to strengthen my view that:
(1) This is more the RSGB’s doing than Ofcom’s.
(2) The really important issues have been studiously ignored (as outlined in the first paragraph of the RSGB’s commentary). Remarkably, these are precisely the issues - almost word for word - that I cited in my posting to this forum earlier this afternoon. It’s uncanny!
Instead, a lot of nonsense about Regional Secondary Locators has been addressed in excruciating detail. It is clear that Ofcom has no understanding of how Regional Secondary Locators work; in particular, the proposals about prefixes to be used by Intermediate licensees are specious in the extreme.
Additionally, they have specifically chosen not to address M1EYP’s “important” issue of multiple callsigns.
I would not afford credence to the so-called “consultation” by responding to it.
73,
Walt (G3NYY)
While I rather doubt that your participation or not makes any difference to the credence of the consultation, it does mean that you rather disqualify yourself from endless complaints about the outcome.
…hey that might be a good thing.
73 Richard G3CWI
I doubt that anyone’s participation in the so-called consultation will make the slightest difference to the outcome.
However, if you feel that your involvement will have any effect, please feel free to waste your time by responding.
73,
Walt (G3NYY)
No worries, they’ll be short of hard currency!
Hey, there’s a thought - duty free single malts?
Brian
It seems to me that most of Ofcoms proposals are just ‘change for the sake of change’ and will achieve nothing at all other than lead to more confusion and cause other problems.
Removing the requirement for using Regional Secondary Locators (except for Intermediate licence) will just break other things, the country of operation will no long be clear and all current systems that use the callsign to determine that information (i.e. for contest multipliers) will be broken.
In my opinion it would be better to change the rules so if you operate in a different country in the UK to that shown on your Licence then you apply the same rules as any overseas licence holder operating under CEPT rules in the UK would. Thus I would become MW/G0LGS/P when operating on a SOTA in Wales - this much more obvious to everyone that my normal call is G0LGS and I’m operating in Wales.
Stewart G0LGS
I respectfully beg to differ. In my professional capacity I have commented in writing on OFCOM consultations and met face to face with OFCOM staff. These were not consultations regarding radio, they related to Telecommunications systems.
I found individual staff and OFCOM as an organisation to be responsive to industry comment, which resulted in a lot of improvements to the final regulations. Clearly they didn’t just do what I (and my company) asked, but they did take it into account and in some cases made the regulations somewhat more workable, even if they were not what we wanted them to be, as they had to balance industry and consumer interest.
In this case I can’t see too many people who have an interest in this except licensed amateur radio operators, so I would hope they should respect majority views that are expressed.
As we say around here “Live in Hope, die in Caergwrle” (sorry - local joke, adjoining villages)
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Which begs the question, who poked the wasp’s nest in the first place. We have a system which has been in place for over 80 years and only now someone somewhere has decided that it is not fit for purpose.
Let us hope that you are right Gerald and that they will listen to the views expressed by amateur radio operators. That way at least a level of logic should percolate into the process. Unfortunately I see little of it in much of the document that has been presented. I for one will be making my views known!
I intimated the answer to that question in one of my postings yesterday.
Like you, I just wish people would let sleeping dogs lie.
73,
Walt (G3NYY)
There are always those people, too many of them, who like to show their importance and effectiveness by making unnecessary changes.
Brian
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