Also known as: Ofcom
Ofcom (the Office of Communications) is the United Kingdom’s communications regulator.1 It allocates and licenses radio spectrum and sets the rules for its use — the UK counterpart to the United States’ FCC, working within the global framework set by the ITU.2
Overview
Ofcom was created by the Office of Communications Act 2002 and began operating in 2003, merging five earlier regulators (including the Radiocommunications Agency) into a single body responsible for the UK’s broadcasting, telecommunications, postal, and — most relevant here — radio-spectrum affairs. Its spectrum work rests on the Wireless Telegraphy Act, under which it manages the UK Frequency Allocation Table, issues (and in some bands auctions) licences, sets technical conditions and power limits, defines licence-exempt bands, and enforces the rules by investigating interference and unlicensed transmitters. Like every national regulator, Ofcom does not invent its band plan from scratch: it implements the international allocations of the ITU and the harmonised European arrangements coordinated through CEPT, the body whose recommendations align spectrum use across European countries. This is the same relationship the FCC and NTIA have with the ITU in the United States.
For a hobbyist, Ofcom’s most visible outputs are the licences and licence-exempt permissions that govern day-to-day radio use in Britain: the amateur-radio licence (whose interests are represented to Ofcom by the RSGB), business radio, PMR446 licence-exempt handhelds, and the conditions on consumer and short-range devices. It also publishes the UK Frequency Allocation Table itself, which is the authoritative answer to “what is this band for in the UK”. Crucially for listeners, Ofcom — not any international body — determines what may lawfully be received in the UK, and UK law here differs notably from the US: it is generally an offence to receive messages you are not authorised to receive, a stricter position than the American one.
Relevance to SDR
Ofcom matters to a UK SDR user in two distinct ways. First, its band plan explains what you are tuning to: where marine, aeronautical, business-radio, amateur, and licence-exempt services sit in the UK, and why some allocations differ from those in North America (a consequence of the ITU’s three-region split and CEPT harmonisation). Second, and more importantly than for many regulators, Ofcom defines the legality of reception. Because UK rules on receiving are stricter than the US model, the question of what you may lawfully listen to and decode is a real one, and Ofcom is the authority that answers it. This is exactly why guidance to “check the regulator for your own jurisdiction” is not boilerplate.
GopherTrunk is a receiver and decoder and implements no regulator-specific logic — it will demodulate whatever RF you feed it — so the responsibility to stay within Ofcom’s rules rests with the operator. See the legal & ethical monitoring lesson, and always confirm the position for your own country before decoding traffic.