Indian radio amateur starts petition for licence change

Rohit Bokade VU3OIR has started a petition requesting a change to the Amateur Radio licence in India to permit all grades of licence to use the amateur radio satellites.

In India holders of the Restricted grade of licence (VU3 prefix) are not permitted to use amateur radio satellites or communicate with the International Space Station. The exam requirements for a Restricted licence are of a similar level to the UK Intermediate.

Rohit says:

“Last decade has seen a rapid increase in Amateur Satellites, especially the ones made by educational institutes. As we are slowly moving towards an era when Space will be democratized, more and more students are becoming interested in joining the Amateur radio community.”

“By keeping the amateur radio service bound to General grade license, we are preventing a vast majority of restricted grade operators consisting of a major portion of students yet to get general grade license, from operating these satellites even if it is possible to operate them within the power bounds of restricted grade. We request you through this petition to allow restricted grade operators to operate amateur satellite service within their emission power bounds.”

Read the full petition text at
https://www.change.org/p/wireless-planning-and-coordination-wpc-wing-change-in-amateur-radio-rules-in-india-to-facilitate-rising-amateur-and-student-satellites

Rohit Bokade (VU3OIR) https://twitter.com/rnbokade/status/1271706670943502336

The two grades of licence in India are General (400w HF, 25w VHF/UHF) and Restricted (50w HF, 10w VHF/UHF). The exam syllabus and licence regulations can be downloaded from
http://www.niar.org/training-material.html

India’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Ministry of Communications, released the 2018/19 Amateur Radio statistics in their Annual Report. See page 60 (PDF page 62) at
http://dot.gov.in/sites/default/files/Annual%20Report-2018-19(English).pdf

Previous Annual Reports http://dot.gov.in/reports-statistic/2471

source: AMSAT-UK