Australian Reciprocal Licensing Changes
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has announced changes to the Amateur licence.
Among the changes they now permit the Encoding, for the purpose of Obscuring the meaning, of control signals for Amateur Satellites or unattended stations.
From WIA News:
---- This is Michael Owen VK3KI President of the Wireless Institute of Australia.
Today I am able to tell you of 3 major decisions made last Thursday by the ACMA board.
In short, the news is that ACMA has made the Determination to amend the Amateur LCD to make the last of changes foreshadowed in the Outcomes published in May 2004; ACMA has issued the Class Licence allowing visiting amateurs to operate in Australia without any other Australian licence, which is hopefully the last steps from our end before Australian amateurs can operate in the CEPT countries on the basis of their Australian Advanced licence, and finally ACMA has announced who has been successful in submitting its expression of interest in the amateur examination management, certificate and certain call sign functions outsourcing.
Those are the headlines.
Now, for a little detail.
The amendments to the LCD are quite extensive. Let me try and summarise the major changes:
The prohibition on the connection of automated systems to a public telecommunications network, which includes the Internet, has been removed.
Foundation licensees cannot make such connections, but Advanced, Standard and Repeater licensees can, but now must "implement reasonable measures to ensure that only appropriately licensed person access the station."
New, and not foreshadowed in the ACA Outcomes, is an obligation on Standard and Advanced licensees (but not repeater licensees) to warn a person connected to an amateur station from a public telecommunications network that they can be heard by others.
Now, signals encoded for the purpose of obscuring the meaning may be used for controlling a satellite or an unattended amateur stations or in emergency operations.
The AX call sign will be able to be used on Australia Day, Anzac Day and World Telecommunication day without doing more.
A number of matters are made clear for the Foundation licensee. At last, 10 watts may be used for all permitted modes. But a Foundation licensee cannot allow a person who is not an amateur to use his or her transmitter, or operate his or her station in automatic mode or computer controlled mode or operate his or her station directly connected to a public telecommunications network.
The obligation for all stations in a net to identify all stations every 10 minutes is relaxed for emergency networks, so that one station may identify all stations every 30 minutes.
There is now a clear requirement that a person operating through a repeater must be licensed to operate on the repeaters output frequency.
As foreshadowed in the Outcomes paper, the Amateur LCD now defines limits to spurious emissions, in fact the ITU limits already applying to the amateur service.
A new and rather complex definition of "operate" defines how an amateur station may be used by someone who is not an amateur.
The Amending Determination comes into effect the day after it is registered, probably next Monday or Tuesday. I hope that a copy will then be available on the WIA website. I have also written a paper that describes in more particular terms the changes, and that is already available on the WIA website.
In probably 3 or 4 weeks a consolidated version of the Amateur LCD incorporating these amendments will be published. That will be a lot easier to read, and something everyone will need to have.
The next major piece of news is that the ACMA has issued a class licence to allow visiting amateurs to operate in Australia for up to 90 days using their home call sign followed by the suffix VK followed by "portable" and then the location of the station, without doing anything more.
That class licence comes into effect on 14 February.
There are 5 levels of visitor licence, 3 matching the Australian Advanced, Standard and Foundation licenses, a VHF licence, and finally, in effect, a 146 to 148 FM licence.
The privileges of each level are set out in the class licence.
ACMA will publish on its website a table showing equivalencies to the Australian visitor levels for different overseas licences.
This class licence for visiting amateurs is, we hope, the final step before CEPT allows Australian Advanced licensees to operate a in the CEPT countries, some 32 countries mainly in Europe, using their Australian call sign, without doing more.
The WIA will let everyone know immediately CEPT has allowed Australian amateurs to operate under what is called TR 61 01.
I hope that a copy of the Class Licence will also be available on the WIA website next Monday or Tuesday.
All of these changes mean that extensive changes are currently being made to the ACMA website, but they won't all be in place immediately. Please be patient.
Now the final piece of news.
As you know, the WIA has repeatedly expressed its concern that its role as the manager of the amateur examination system has not been secure. Finally, last year the ACMA advertised for expressions of interest to provide the examination management function, to issue certificates, and certain call sign functions.
The WIA has been advised that its expression of interest met all the criteria published by ACMA for the tasks, and that ACMA will now negotiate the terms of a contract with the WIA to cover these matters being outsourced.
Together, these three matters are of great importance to Australian amateurs, with now only one matter outstanding, that is for CEPT to accept that VK licensees can operate in the CEPT countries as we will allow their licensees to operate after 14 February. ---- Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/HOMEPAGE/PC=HOME
ACMA Amends Amateur LCD http://www.wia.org.au/newsevents/news/2008/20080208-3/index.php
The New Australian Amateur Radio Regulations http://www.wia.org.au/newsevents/news/2008/20080208-3/documents/The%20New%20...
73 Trevor M5AKA --------------- Daily Amateur Radio RSS News: http://www.southgatearc.org/ Email your news items to: editor at southgatearc.org
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On Feb 8, 2008, at 9:15 AM, Trevor wrote:
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has announced changes to the Amateur licence.
Among the changes they now permit the Encoding, for the purpose of Obscuring the meaning, of control signals for Amateur Satellites or unattended stations.
All I have to say to this is FINALLY...
Now, signals encoded for the purpose of obscuring the meaning may be used for controlling a satellite or an unattended amateur stations or in emergency operations.
Another VERY important piece of this: Can also be used for emergency operations TRAINING. (Train like you're going to fight... so to speak.)
The rest is also fascinating, but I've most impressed by the encryption lead the Aussies have taken. I've been on the "reasonable encryption" bandwagon for digital modes for many MANY years now, saying so quite loudly in public.
Congratulations to the Aussies for doing it right... command and control of an unattended station has always been problematic and while the satellite folks got a dispensation from the FCC to do this long ago (for satellite control ops), us folks that run "community" systems terrestrially have often wished we could reasonably encrypt/obscure our command and control traffic.
Even if I have to store it, log it, whatever... I just hate playing the "security by obscurity" game with control frequencies, rolling control codes, and whatever.
It's just silly in the modern digital era where powerful encryption technologies have existed that are within reach for the average "Joe" (since the advent of Phil Zimmerman's PGP software) that control operations are still handled like some kind of back-alley speak-easy "secret code list" society.
Yay Aussies!
-- Nate Duehr, WY0X nate@natetech.com
Hi Nate
Among the changes they now permit the Encoding, for the purpose of Obscuring the meaning, of control signals for Amateur Satellites or unattended stations.
All I have to say to this is FINALLY...
Now, signals encoded for the purpose of obscuring the meaning may be used for controlling a satellite or an unattended amateur stations or in emergency operations.
Another VERY important piece of this: Can also be used for emergency operations TRAINING. (Train like you're going to fight... so to speak.)
I am not sure what the purpose of obscuring the meaning is. For command and control, is a digital signature not sufficient? Implemented with a continually changing challenge-response combined with a private key, this would prevent the resending of recorded commands doing damage.
The only reason I can see for encryption is to protect NPPI data during emergencies, but I don't understand why it's needed for command and control.
Of course, there may be another reason for obsuring the meaning that I've missed!
73, Howard G6LVB
participants (3)
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Howard Long -
Nate Duehr -
Trevor