the big vhf swindle

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colvic987

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remember last years 'FREE' vhf ships license for life.


Now they are trying to get the money back (and probably more) through charging for the bandwidth.

Initially proposing for the land based fixed vhf stations to foot the bill, the mca and port authorities are up in arms on having to try and find the money.

The options to charge the end user, although the initial report rejects the possibility of charging end users, it would most probably be heavily proposed, as it normally is in this country, (why pay when we can sting the customer for loads of money). so you could end up with a bill every month for the vhf calls you make, and a standard charge for the admin...

make your view heard checkout the form at

www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/sfrps/howtorespond/form

And while we're filling out that one, bookmark the red diesel one also.

If thats driven you to drink remember the drink boating consultation

it's all bound to be a piss up in a brewery, more laws and fines/licences, extra cash for mr brown (sorry, new one now mr alistar darling) to give away to anyone who arrives at dover/heathrow, or just loves a lie in every day,( excluding all you retirees)....

Better drown my sorrows /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif before i sell the boat and find another hobby i can enjoy without to many rules and regs..(tiddleywinks comes to mind, bound to be able to have a bit of fun with that). /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
 
Here in Oz VHF ships licence is covered by what they call a "Class Licence" which means one licence covers all the boats in the country.


You still need an operators licence and shore VHF Maritime Mobile stations need a licence. (Which does cost a small fee)
This info may help your argument.

We still have the 27mhz boating frequencies as well which require no operators or station licence and the radio cost a lot less than VHF.
This is a variation on US CB radio but works quite well. Although may possibly be phased out in lieu of VHF. Till then I carry both.
As for licencing of boats and skippers we seem to have way more reqirements than UK. but I don't think it a bad thing.
olewill
 
Is there a link that explains clearly what the proposals are? I'm afraid I don't fully understand from your post.

I don't see how we could be charged for usage, though.
 
We used to have a license fee here however it was dispensed with last year on the grounds it was not commercial to collect it...20 pounds per boat.

What is being proposed is that we now pay for the use of equipment such as radar,EPIRBS SaRT and VHF. The question one asks is how can they collect these fees in a commercial manner when they could not manage this with the licence fees.

The government is being chased by public bodies that need more and more frequency spectrum to provide such services as monitoring us every second of the day...country wide number plate recognition live to monitor our cars..charging us for every footstep we make on a public pavement and ever mile we drive etc etc etc......and the government thought the cellular network could cope /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

This means some folk are willing to pay big dollars for frequency allocation and so the powers that be want to charge for the use of all frequencies and maybe this would include VHF.. Heaven knows how they will monitor usage or wether it would be an annual one off charge. In the even t of the latter they might have to weigh this up against folk moving to cellular phones and not using VHF as this actually creates extra costs for the emergency services searching for casualties as they can not home on cellular signals as they can with VHF.

Swindle....very good definition in some regards /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
I'm probably wrong .... but having now wasted quite a bit of time reading the bumf on OFCOM ..... the url you give is actually unfair - as you direct to the response page - which is later in the proceedings than the actual document or summary. I stepped back to the summary and find that what they are actually talking about is the radio spectrum - this covers not only VHF ( a very small section) and all broadcast freq's as per commercial radio ... MOD .... PR app's .... in fact all radio comms gear currently using airwaves ...
It talks about commercial pressures to allocate more freq's to that which generate revenue ... allocate more to private users ... increase freq allocations in given bandwidths .....

To then take it and claim in a post that they are going to charge for Marine VHF use ... I could not find a direct reference to that ... OK - there may be an inference - but I read it as different to what you post ....
 
[ QUOTE ]
Is there a link that explains clearly what the proposals are? I'm afraid I don't fully understand from your post.

I don't see how we could be charged for usage, though.

[/ QUOTE ]

Use his url link quoted ...BUT step back a couple of pages on OFCOM to discussion document ......... a PDF file or better is to click on the online summary ....

You can bore yourself to tears ... probably arrive at same conclusion I did ... and ask yourself - why did I bother to read it !!
 
[ QUOTE ]
Here in Oz VHF ships licence is covered by what they call a "Class Licence" which means one licence covers all the boats in the country.


[/ QUOTE ]


In NSW when it became compulsory to carry a radio outside 3 miles all license fees were dropped. This applies to all VHF and 27 mhz radios. Commercial operators with HF still have call signs but not sure whether there is a fee involved. The government body collecting the fees was disbanded. The cost of collecting fees and trying to prevent shore base stations was higher than the fees collected. And of course was counter productive.

Now as a commercial fisherman my vessel has to carry a VMS system which allows the government to monitor everything 24 hours a day. There is a small fee there but its to a private company.
 
if you read everything then you ll find ou that Ofcom want to charge the MCA for the use of the spectrum as used by the marine world....This covers things like radar...epirbs.....sart...VHF,,


These are the same principles Ofcom use to charge the likes of O2 and Vodaphone etc for the frequencies they use.

The MCA needs to fill its piggy bank so the hand can dip in the right pocket and pay to the left pocket zillions of pounds.

The MCA thinks the way round this is to charge the end users....Guess who the end users are???????????

Heaven knows how they will calculate charges. Seems to me they should have left the licence in place /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Seeing as the number of leisure installations by far outnumbers the commercial installations could it be we will be subsidising commercial shipping ?????

Seems Big brother needs lots of spectrum for all those projects planned in the future where our every move is recorded that the spectrum will go to him who pays most. Apparently the MOD is selling some of its share .

/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
 
Well it ain't likely to be on a per call basis! There ain't no way of recording who is using what other than a man with a pencil! Unless you have DSC of course . . . .

Big problem is that VHF is analogue spectrum which is wastefull of bandwidth. "the next big thing" will be digital "VHF equivalent" Maybe using PMR technology. They will offer us lots more channels













at a price?
 
I have just posted the item to highlight that the powers to be are consulting all interested parties, before they decide on the outcome of the radio spectrum sale, remember the 22bn for the 3g networks, well this is the same sort of idea, but with most of the marine traditional use systems, and how to get some income from them.(pay it or lose it)


As the sailing mags hit the doormats of the nation and the shelves of the newagents, the information with reference to the charging of the end user is mentioned, but no mention of this is in the main ofcom document, maybe this is a document for the main users and enforcers to consult to and not us the general boating fraternity, but as most implementations of this sort of payment, we are the last to know about them and its to late to input our objections.

This seems to be a uk wide consultation only so will not have any implications to our european wide sailors unless they own a boat in uk waters.

With vhf we don't need vast expensive networks to pay for to make them work like the telephone and broadband network, it is just a payment to be able to use the frequencies legally.(government stealth tax again) If you don't or can't pay then we will sell it off to someone who can. (and how much would that cost us then).

ok, competitive prices come to mind then, cheap broadband or free, but you pay in other ways, this would not be viable for marine users. (or would it).

(You own a boat so you can afford it ????), but how many of us can just afford the boat and are hard pressed to keep to that lifestyle, but not having a new car, or moving to that nice new house you would love to have...keeps the boat in the water, and not on the brokerage list.

We are being battered by most of these direct 'hit the pocket' laws now, we are awaiting the red diesel price hike and drink boating laws to kick in by the end of the year, and this is yet another one to arrive on the scene.


Maybe we should have stuck with the £20 licence fee, 'better the devil you know, then the devil you don't.


And for all us budget sailors of which i am one, it might come a time where the pile of sailing invoices outweigh the pleasures of getting on the boat to sail away to your favourite bay.....
 
I think you'll find that being under a British flag is much less expensive than being under French, Spanish or Italian probably even with extra licence fees for radio. We are not obliged to have boat inspections or pass sailing tests, either.
 
I agree with you there, but its still the list of things which have been relatively affordable in the past and with the powers to be, to be able to change the rules and regs to get more money from the users, and we just sit there and pay up. giving them the incentive to find even more ways of getting more cash from us.

destroying the benefits of the lifestyle you enjoy, through the pocket.
 
Digital Channels
..........................................................

You are forgetting that the marine frequencies are internationally agreed regarding use and modes etc....Not much point the uk selling off these frequencies or going digital as then the foreign vessels using our ports would be at rather a loose end. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Yes it will be inrteresting to see where this goes and what will replace the old £20 licence fee .
 
The pnly other way to tax this would be via a new equipment tax, like a duty. That way you would pay a lifetime fee when you buy a new radio.
 
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