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BoxOfRain • today at 10:49 AM • 3 replies • view on HN

Honestly I'm very sad that the AM broadcast bands (for those unaware there's two in Europe: long wave and medium wave) have been allowed to fall out of use in the UK without regulatory reform. Fair enough the BBC and commercial broadcasters don't want it any more, Absolute Radio stopped on AM because the fine from Ofcom was actually less than running the transmitter estate for example, but there's no reason community/heritage efforts like Radio Caroline need to be subject to a burdensome licensing regime from an era AM was big business when their band is currently almost dead. In my view we should do the opposite, the whole band should be opened to hobbyist broadcasters for a nominal fee and a power limit of a few hundred watts; it's not like most people have the space to put up an aerial that'll go very far on AM.

It feels very wasteful of a scarce resource to leave this spectrum abandoned, especially when it has interesting properties.


Replies

jacquesm • today at 3:25 PM

We will come to regret this. I hope they at least properly mothballed the whole thing and will keep the antennas in good shape because we may well need that capability at some point in the future.

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thesuitonym • today at 8:24 PM

What, like some kind of amateur radio?

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sourcecodeplz • today at 3:33 PM

maybe it is a form of control.

if anyone could broadcast to so many so easily, that is considered dangerous nowadays. if there is no one there to receive (no one remembers AM, no AM receivers), you can still broadcast but no one will listen.