ARLA/CLUSTER: Numero total de radioamadores licenciados australianos está estagnado, apesar de mais terem retornado ao hobby em números significativos

[João Costa > CT1FBF]

Australian ham radio license numbers stagnant

WIA News reports amateur radio license numbers are stagnant despite lapsed
licensees returning to the hobby in significant numbers

Recent amateur licence statistics reveal a small growth over the past year,
restoring licensee numbers close to where we were over a decade ago. It
seems that those leaving the hobby and those becoming silent keys are being
replaced by both new licensees and lapsed licensees returning to the hobby
in significant numbers. This "churn" has driven up amateur licence numbers
slightly this past year and seems to have maintained them, with some small
variation, over the years since 2006.

Peeling back the layers of the onion of amateur licensing statistics
reveals an intriguing picture. If we start with the latest annual report of
the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), released in
October, it reveals total amateur licence numbers grew a mere 15 to 15,144
to June 2017. That number includes beacons, repeaters, clubs and those
amateurs with multiple call signs.

Wireless Institute of Australia (WIA) Statistician, Marc Hillman VK3OHM,
has trawled through the ACMA licence register and found that the total
number of individual amateurs was 14,009, an increase of 175 from 2016.
Although not statistically significant, it’s a move in the right direction.
That was achieved despite the ACMA reporting a fall in assessments. Over
July 2016 to June 2017, the ACMA report records a total of 486 Foundation,
Standard and Advanced assessments conducted by the WIA, which is well down
on the 1271 held in the previous year. So, although assessments declined
sharply, amateur licences increased.

Shortly after the ACMA’s amateur licensing reform, which ushered-in the
Foundation licence and reduced the previous five licences to two – Standard
and Advanced, the number of individual amateurs reached 14,002 in 2006.
Numbers reached a peak of 14,616 in 2010, the WIA’s centenary year, then
declined to 13,834 in 2016. In 2017, with 14,009 amateurs, we’re back to
where we were in 2006. In late 1997 or 20 years ago when the 1998 Call Book
was compiled from the Australian Communications Authority's newly-minted
digital database, the number of amateur licences totalled 16,540. Excluding
beacons, repeaters, clubs and multiples, the total number of individual
amateurs was around 15,500.

The late-1990s through early 2000s saw a decline in the number of amateurs
as the returned service men and women from WW II who took up Amateur Radio
in the post-war boom began entering the ranks of silent keys, as had the
generation of pre-war amateurs in the two decades beforehand. But those
years – the ‘70s and ‘80s – brought the CB boom and its spinoff for Amateur
Radio, which dissipated over the 1990s. That generational churn sustained
Amateur Radio through the late 20th century, but it petered-out over the
early-2000s until the ACMA’s amateur licence reform, which kicked-in from
2005.

Amateur Radio in Australia needs another revamp. In 2014, in the lead-up to
a statutory remake of the amateur licence conditions, the WIA advised the
ACMA about the sort of changes that would propel Amateur Radio into a new
era, where the attractions and conditions of the past were no longer
relevant. The remake ended up as an administrative patch-up as ACMA
resources could not meet the demands of an extensive makeover and the
federal government had begun a program of radical spectrum reform.

As a new radiocommunications act looked over the horizon, the WIA began to
look at the matter over 2016 and sounded out the ACMA broadly on the
approach that could be taken. After circulating the likely licence
conditions changes for comment, it further refined the issues ahead. Then,
in early 2017 the WIA widely consulted on the way forward with those having
an interest in Amateur Radio, licensed or not.

A submission from the WIA is to recommend a range of measures for the three
classes of licence to make them relevant, attractive and fit-for-purpose in
this tech-savvy world. The ACMA is expected in 2018 to review what’s been
proposed and prepare a new Licence Conditions Determination (LCD), our
regulations, giving an opportunity to reshape the future of Amateur Radio
in Australia.

*Jim Linton VK3PC*

Source WIA News
http://www.wia.org.au/members/broadcast/wianews/
display.php?file_id=wianews-2017-11-19
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