BELGIUM

• "Legal provisions regarding the use of RLAN in the 2.4 GHz and the 5 GHz band," Belgisch Instituut voor postdiensten en telecommunicatie/Institut Belge des services postaux et des télécommunications (BIPT/IBPT), 10 December 2002, texts in Flemish/Dutch or French: no license needed unless service is offered to the general public. After Belgium implements EU directives, public network service providers must "declare" themselves to the regulator in lieu of a license.
• "BIPT press release regarding illegal wireless radio equipment," BIPT/IBPT, 9 September 2003 - this specifically concerns unlicensed short-range devices that transmit audio from an MP3 player or GSM phone to an FM radio broadcast receiver: they were illegal in Belgium until...
• "Décision du Conseil de l'IBPT du 7 février 2007 concernant les Interfaces Radio B7, B11, B12 et B14," BIPT, 1 March 2007, in French or Flemish. This transposes several EU decisions related to low-power and/or license exempt radio into Belgian law - authorizing nanowatt transmitters in the FM broadcast band, RFID in the UHF band, wireless microphones, etc.
• Approval News, June 2005: "The Radio interface B3 (V1.1) was published in the Belgian Official [Journal] on 7th January, 2005, so the band 5470-5725 MHz is now allowed for 802.11a devices (indoor and outdoor use)..."
• Pages 28070-28132 in Moniteur Belge/Belgisch Staatsblad (20.06.2005) contain the new law on electronic communications (text in French and Flemish), which came into effect on 30 June 2005, transposing the EU directives. Chapter 2 deals with radio frequencies. According to Yves Blondeel, Article 19 of the new law "opens possibilities for frequency trading, and even some potential frequency liberalisation (change of use, insofar as the band is not harmonised)..."
• "When open access isn't an option," by Joanne Taaffe, Total Telecom, 30 March 2007: "The region of Flanders is investing several million euros in a trial project called iCity, a location-based mobile service run on a dense WiFi network in the town of Hasselt... The iCity software platform was developed initially by local students, but the project has since received technology investment from a number of large software and hardware companies, including Microsoft and Siemens. The trial in Hasselt provides local, location-based information on a simple to use, but very graphical, interface over a WiFi network of approximately 200 antennas in the heart of the town, a one square kilometer area. The local government invested €2.33 million in the project in 2006 and intends to spend a maximum of €4 million this year. The aim of the project, however, is not to build a municipal WiFi network, but to stimulate service providers to come up with creative alternatives. 'We have to be provocative. Mobile operators are investing in UMTS, so they are not too happy with governments investing in another technology. But we haven't invested in WiFi [instead] we want a beauty contest,' said Dewaele. 'It's not... about WiFi.'..."
• "Citymesh deploys wireless network in Blankenberge, Belgium," by Esme Vos, MuniWireless, 16 July 2007: "Among the municipal and consumer applications that Citymesh envisions for the Blankenberge network are wireless cameras for security, voice over Wi-Fi, audio distribution, parking control, sensor networks and in the future, mobile digital TV. Citymesh is planning to roll out more citywide Wi-Fi networks in Europe..."
• "Meru Networks Delivers the Largest Campus-Wide Wireless Network in Belgium," company press release, 11 April 2007: "The Ministry of the Brussels-Capital Region selects Meru to provide wireless Internet access across the Vrije Universiteit Brussel/Universite libre de Bruxelles in Brussels..."
• Reseau Citoyen (Citizen Network). Experiments in - and news about - low-cost user-owned wireless networks (website in Dutch, French and English).
• "Europeans get the morning news on e-paper," New York Times Paris Bureau (via Taipei Times), 25 April 2006: "This month, De Tijd, a Belgian financial newspaper, started testing versions of electronic paper, a device with low-power digital screens embedded with digital ink -- millions of microscopic capsules the width of a human hair made with organic material that display light or dark images in response to electrical charges. This marks only one test of new e-paper devices competing to become the iPod of the newspaper business. Other e-paper trials are being undertaken by the paper Les Echos, which is based in Paris, by the newspaper trade group IFRA in Germany and, in the US, by the New York Times... The devices used by De Tijd, called the iLiad E-reader, are made by iRex Technologies, a spinoff of Royal Philips Electronics... The devices weigh about 365g (light enough to be held in one hand while reading) and can be updated in Wi-Fi hot spots..."
• HotSpots Vinden - Google Maps show hotspots in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg - over 5000 of them (as of March 2007).
• "IMEC realized a cost-efficient fully reconfigurable software-defined radio transceiver IC," Interuniversity MicroElectronics Center press release, 12 February 2007: "IMEC's wideband software-defined radio (SDR) transceiver, named SCALDIO, is widely programmable to operate with all current and future cellular, WLAN, WPAN, broadcast and positioning standards in the frequency range between... 174MHz and 6GHz. The unique architecture of the multi-mode SDR transceiver has a power consumption and CMOS chip area comparable to current state-of-the-art single mode radios thereby fitting the performance, power and cost requirements for integration into next-generation mass volume mobile devices..."
• "IMEC shows first ultra wideband ZigBee chip," by Steve Bush, Electronics Weekly, 21 February 2007: "Belgian semiconductor research organisation IMEC has revealed a 90nm CMOS transmitter for ZigBee over UWB. 'The digital transmitter is the first ever published IEEE 802.15.4a-compliant transmitter and out-performs state-of-the-art low-power narrowband transmitter implementations,' claimed IMEC. The transmitter covers all the frequency bands of the standard between 3 and 10GHz. 'It is especially suited for application in low-power wireless sensor networks,' said IMEC..."

Europe - Regional Overview