Wireless Telegraphy (Fixed Penalty) Regs 2011

[paulears]

I came across some information today - Ofcom have been using this 2011 regulation since October 2011 to send fixed penalty notices to people who commit offences under the act. Initially they have been concentrating on Business Radio - where the first Fixed Penalty notice was sent to a Taxi firm who did not renew their license (similar price to our radio mic ones). The illegal use of their radio system resulted in the fixed penalty, plus confiscation of the equipment. The fixed penalty fee is £100. Ignoring the fixed penalty notice results in a court appearance. Fixed penalty payments do not generate a criminal conviction, but the court decision would.

 

The interesting bit of the information states:

Now Ofcom has extended the regime to encompass all relevant offences under the Wireless Telegraphy Act. This includes people who either use radio spectrum without having an appropriate license, or who operate outside the terms and conditions of any license they do hold.

 

The information is attributed to Jim McNally, Ofcom Enforcement Policy Officer.

 

It's easy to see that unlicensed operation in channel 38, or in the old white space between TV channels, or indeed continued operation in channel 69 would seem quite simple to prosecute now. For traffic offences they have cameras, all they need are radios. It seems the systems are in place to generate fines - I wonder when they'll get to us? I'd guess Business Radio first, means probably Marine next, then perhaps aviation, but then surely we must be next?

[gibbothegreat]

Can't come soon enough for me, have lost count of the number of music acts turning up with unnannounced radiomics on illegal spectrum, or even legal frequencies but unlicensed - totally no-win position dealing with that, either you're just a jobsworth or they're using it in a way which one of ours won't do, or... and it just sours the relationship from the start.

[Bobbsy]

Only problem is that £100 is too low considering the cost of a license. It would almost encourage people to risk the penalty.

[Ynot]

I agree that it's past time that some teeth were bared to back up the actual legislation - too many people on the illegal spectrum for my liking.

 

But that £100, according to Paul's OP is £100 plus confiscation of the equipment - which would add another minimum 3 or 4 hundred quid to the loss by the perp...

[themadhippy]

is £100 plus confiscation of the equipment

-

If they want to get realy tough they could treat it as pirate radio and remove anything thats attached to the illegal transmission equipment,so goodbye desk,pa.....

[Simon Lewis]

I can see it might be easy to follow up a company who once had a licence but have not renewed. However, what of the countless thousands who bought their radiomic, found it worked out of the box and have operated illegally ever since? Are Ofcom going to have hordes of inspectors with directional aerials seeking out every transgressor?!

[kerry davies]

Hippy has a point and I well remember the CB radio days when they used to impound coaches and cars. Nothing to do with licensing or illegality but VAT fraud.

 

The failure to pay a tiny amount of VAT used to bring down the wrath of the "Revenue Men" who have far more powers and were far more draconian than the police.

 

It is far more likely to be a paper trail exercise and responses to "interference" complaints than a pro-active seek and destroy mission as the CB radios were.

[Ynot]

Strikes me that it would be a minor addition (if indeed it wasn't already there) to the TV licencing detector vans...

 

Do they still operate these vans...?

 

I believe so, but am not sure

[Simon Lewis]

1368905776[/url]' post='473292']

Do they still operate these vans...?

 

Isn't most of it done via the retailers who have to pass on details when they sell a TV?

[bruce]

It's said that a significant proportion of "TV Detector vans" are simply dummys - empty vans with an aerial on the top, and a big sign on the side saying "TV DETECTOR VAN". It's also suggested that that "significant proportion" may be around 100%...

 

Especially since the BBC are rather reticent about how they work, and evidence from such equipment has never been used in court.

[J Pearce]

The old ones allegedly worked by picking up the oscillator from the intermediate heterodyning stage, I suspect modern TVs are too well screened for this to work.

[Simon Lewis]

1368911228[/url]' post='473295']

The old ones allegedly worked by picking up the oscillator from the intermediate heterodyning stage, I suspect modern TVs are too well screened for this to work.

 

Enforcement officers may use a hand-held detection device to measure both the direction and the strength of a TV signal. This makes it easy for us to locate TV receiving equipment in even the hardest-to-reach places.

Detector vans: We also have a fleet of detector vans that can detect the use of TV receiving equipment at specifically targeted addresses within 20 seconds.

[J Pearce]

My experience of them in student halls was that they used rather lower tech methods.

[smalljoshua]

Of course, I'd wager that a good amount of TV license infringement is now from watching live TV via non-terrestrial methods so these scanners wouldn't work for that anyway.

 

Josh

[cedd]

A quick word on the way Ofcom work;

 

They don't have anything like the number of staff that they used to have in the good old days of the Radio Agency. Regional offices are closed in favour of home-working officers. Because of this their work is quite often reactive. Interference reports from safety-critical agencies (like myself) get high priority and still do have great service.

 

What they do tend to do now is have projects where they'll target a specific industry. They've been known to set up on a friday night alongside vehicle licensing and whichever agency looks after taxis, and pull in every taxi working in a city one by one to inspect their radio equipment, license and vehicle serviceability.

 

So what might be a likely scenario is that they'll have a project to do a bit of a push on radio mics one month, and then nip out and track a few down. I know a couple of years ago they picked panto season, looked on websites of receiving houses to see when they had their big panto on, and then wrote to the venue asking them to prove they had licensing in place.

 

The WT act has far bigger teeth available to it if needs be. Ofcom have significant powers including the ability to raid and search a premises (with a warrant) and to seize equipment and as is rightfully mentioned above - equipment related to the offense doesn't just include the transmitter. In the case of pirate radio it would include decks, records, mixers and computers.

 

It doesn't take much to prove that an offense is being commited, simply sit outside with a spectrum analyser, listen in to some of the lib and join the dots to prove it's that show that you're hearing.

 

 

What clouds the issue for us is that there's a band manager in place, which isn't the case for aviation and (I think) marine. I think JFMG might have to do a bit of their own detection and chasing of unlicensed users. They certainly have a field officer or two as they've got a blog on the JFMG website. I'm not sure if this would mean Ofcom leave our spectrum well alone because it's somebody else's problem, but ultimately it's worth remembering that Ofcom do have some pretty big teeth.

 

All of the above plus my day job where radio communications is safety critical, plus the thinking "If I'm paying for a licence then why should you get away with it?" means I'm really quite hot on the whole mic licensing issue. Afraid I really don't think there's any excuse for knowingly operating illegally. It's an offense, it's a stupid thing to do (why risk your show on unknown and unprotected spectrum?) and why should you get £75 extra profit out of your shows that I'm not getting?