Having spoken to some people close to this, Ofcom knows that the licence numbers don't reflect the number of actual users so they are pretty worthless. They tried to revoke some licences a few years ago for not validating but looks like they have given up on that. If people had to renew their licence every couple of years and pay a fee the drop in numbers would be half what they are now. The issue with 144 MHz was that it was only one French company that wanted this and no one else wanted the pain of a fight. However, if it does become valuable then the bands will go the same as 13cm band and we'd be kicked out.?
