Wireless microphone frequencies in the UK

The UK is a well-organised place to do wireless, which makes it deceptively easy for a US mixer to walk in with the wrong instincts. There is a real licensing system, it is cheap, it works online, and it is genuinely enforced. The two things that catch American crews out are assuming the licence-exempt habit from home transfers, and reading a decade-old forum post about who issues the licence.

You licence with Ofcom, directly

Ofcom administers PMSE — Programme Making and Special Events — licensing itself, through its own online portal. This is the single most commonly out-of-date fact in circulation. From 1997 the service was run under contract by a band manager, JFMG Ltd, later owned by Arqiva. Ofcom terminated that contract and brought PMSE licensing in-house in 2015.

Licence-exempt versus licensed

The UK does have licence-exempt microphone spectrum. It is just not the spectrum a US-market radio mic is built to reach.

The sub-GHz-and-up allocations are Ofcom's answer to the space lost in the 700 MHz clearance. They are narrow, and they demand gear that tunes there — which is a different conversation about kit, covered in working above 700 MHz.

What it costs

By US standards these numbers barely register. Nobody skips a UK licence because it is expensive — people skip it because they didn't know it existed.

The visiting-production question

Channel 38, and one detail to verify

Channel 38, `606–614 MHz`, is current and confirmed. It is the UK's designated shared microphone channel, available UK-wide on a shared, non-protected basis. Shared means exactly what it says: you are not the only production entitled to be there, and the licence buys access, not protection. Scan it like any other channel — see scanning and walk testing.

What RF Scout shows for a UK address

RF Scout scores UK addresses against a UK band table. DTT channels 21–37 and 39–48 are modelled as white space, Channel 38 (606–614 MHz) is surfaced as the licensed PMSE channel rather than as free spectrum, and the 700 MHz band 694–790 MHz — cleared by Ofcom in 2020 and handed to EE, Vodafone, O2 and Three — is hard-blocked. If you are used to reading US scores, note that the shape of the UK table is different: more usable DTT channels than the post-repack US, but a licensing requirement sitting on top of nearly all of them. More on the scoring method in how RF Scout scores a location.