For some time, I have had a personal view, that may not be shared by others, that OFCOM lacks technical expertise and is very weak when it comes to enforcement. This view was based on personal experience some years ago when I needed to speak with OFCOM people about VLF. Names escape me. To be honest, the people I spoke with were useless!! Perhaps they had degrees in cooking or football? Technically, I got the impression that they had no idea what I was talking about. All they seemed to be interested in was not breaking the law. Engage brains? Think laterally? Definitely not. I got the impression at the time that all that mattered were services that generated money and keeping these "clean".
Reading Southgate News today only serves to re-enforce my personal view that OFCOM is a bunch of generally non-technical bureaucrats, who know little technical detail. Bring back the GPO inspectors who actually visited and checked! In my early days I had my station inspected several times.
I hope others have had better experiences.
See http://southgatearc.org/news/2017/november/ofcom-and-ham-radio-repeater-abuse.htm#.Wf7nLbp2vIU
Roger,
ReplyDeleteSame here in the states. The FCC is an appointed position, usually as a reward for some political campaigning or whatnot, and the tech savvy engineers who used to run is seem to have all retired or moved on to other things. So that gets you politically motivated bureaucrats who have no idea what the actual technical issues are, nor do they care...
A sad state of affairs.
DaveL
KF7JAF