Ofcom licence check?

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kurisu
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Ofcom licence check?

Post by kurisu »

What ever happened to the Ofcom licence check website where you could put in a post code and see a list a licences and frequencies in a particular area?
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Metradio
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Re: Ofcom licence check?

Post by Metradio »

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kurisu
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Re: Ofcom licence check?

Post by kurisu »

thanks mike. My old bookmark was well out of date.
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Re: Ofcom licence check?

Post by Goffy »

Does anyone else find that this freezes or crashes their browser? I've been away from the hobby for a while and find this new ofcom page is not as easy to use as the old one was. I've got 8gig of RAM in my pc so no idea why its crashing. Its also clunky and awkard to use compared with the old WTR ofcom page.

I saw a thread on here where someone has created a database to be used with google maps. I'll try that even though it wont be as up to date.
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Mikel
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Re: Ofcom licence check?

Post by Mikel »

Goffy wrote: 27 Jun 2019, 04:42 Does anyone else find that this freezes or crashes their browser? I've been away from the hobby for a while and find this new ofcom page is not as easy to use as the old one was. I've got 8gig of RAM in my pc so no idea why its crashing. Its also clunky and awkard to use compared with the old WTR ofcom page.

I saw a thread on here where someone has created a database to be used with google maps. I'll try that even though it wont be as up to date.
Yes I get exactly the same. I have 7 laptops (long story!) all running on Linux Mint and whilst none of them are the most modern i9 machines they all work OK, the OFCOM portal is so slow and laggy as to be unusable.

No big deal though as no doubt it is just as out of date as the last effort, so I can live without it.
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Goffy
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Re: Ofcom licence check?

Post by Goffy »

Mikel I'm also using linux mint. Maybe it works fine on Windows. Its some microsoft product (cant recall the name) that ofcom are using to present their portal so perhaps it doesnt play well with linux. I just found out yesterday that google earth is also useless with linux on older machines too, so that rules out plan b ie using the kml file mentioned above.

I wish I'd kept my old hand written frequency lists. All found the old fashioned way ie scanning the band then listening to the traffic to identify the user. Often cross referencing with the Yellow Pages and an A to Z to identify business users. At least my own lists were accurate and usable.
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Re: Ofcom licence check?

Post by Mikel »

OFCOM use Microsoft Power BI so yes that could be the problem I suppose, I think it may be optimised for Windows 10, but I am not an IT expert so I could be wrong.

I am mainly using Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia XFCE and it works very well considering it is free, easily as good as any Microsoft stuff, but as you probably know, you do run into these compatibility issues occasionally, but worth it to try and break the back of the Microsoft monopoly a little.

The old OFCOM WTR was way out of date and I have no reason to believe this new version will fare any better in that respect.

I still have a paper copy of the 'UK Scanning Directory 9th edition', obviously the listings and allocations are mainly obsolete now but I use the book as a hand written log, it is very handy and no battery required.
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paulears
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Re: Ofcom licence check?

Post by paulears »

The OFCOM WTR online system is still wrecked, bug ridden and has faulty data. Near me, some poor fella lives in a small private house, but has an 'interesting' antenna on his house - he has a scanner I assume. Trouble is, his house shows up as belonging to Suffolk Constabulary. The Police also have a transmitter right in the centre of a football pitch according to the map. My own business radio licence vanished totally for 6 months, and now appears in my full name as an individual rather than my business. To get the map to work, you need to enter quite specific things in the frequency boxes. The data appears a bit suspect, but then the processing of the database is screwed up too. They know about it, but seem to have been unable to do anything too fix it.
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Re: Ofcom licence check?

Post by grafter »

Either takes forever or just hangs using Firefox on W10 on an i7! Probably designed by some spotty uni grad and tested over their fibre intranet rather than the real world.
my friend grafter, seems like you are using a very offensive tone in the reply.
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Mikel
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Re: Ofcom licence check?

Post by Mikel »

Thanks guys, that's interesting! Its obviously just generally knackered (technical term). I did send them an e-mail about the problems I was having 6 months ago but they did not get back to me .

Apparently Ofcom has outsourced it's IT management to NIIT Technologies an Indian company. The £23m contract will see the Indian supplier work with Ofcom on its IT infrastructure and applications until 2022.

So you never know it might get fixed when someone else takes over in a few years time (don't hold your breath!)
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Wiggler
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Re: Ofcom licence check?

Post by Wiggler »

If you have Google Earth there's a snapshoty of the ofcom WTR in this KML File.

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=56605

I find it works better than the dodgey website and easier to navigate.
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