News Archive
Events Calendar
Library
Activities
Advisors
About
Links
Contact Us
Country Links
Africa
Asia & Pacific
Europe
Latin America
Middle East
Global Policy Tools
Brought to you as a public service of the Open Spectrum Foundation (Stichting Open Spectrum), Amsterdam - Prague
NEWS
Ofcom says no to power boost for WLANs at 2.4GHz, but yes at 5.8GHz
After a public consultation drew mainly negative responses to their proposal to raise the power allowance for unlicensed WLANs in rural areas, Ofcom today announced it is dropping the idea for 2.4GHz, but authorising it throughout the UK for 5.8GHz.
Click here for the original proposals, here for the public responses, and here for Ofcom's decision. From the decision summary:
"1.1 On 12 July 2006 Ofcom published a consultation on higher power limits for licence-exempt devices. It raised three key questions:
"i. Should higher powers be allowed at 2.4GHz in rural areas?
"ii. Should power levels be raised in all areas at 5.8GHz?
"iii. Should conducted rather than radiated power levels be used as the basis for regulation?"1.2 We received 30 responses from a wide range of organisations. This note provides a brief summary of the responses across each of the key questions and sets out our proposals for further action.
"1.3 Concerning the use of higher powers in rural areas, there was a variety of responses from stakeholders. Many stakeholders highlighted the issue of potential interference resulting from increasing powers which, they argued, would outweigh the potential benefits. This, they argued, would result in a net cost rather than benefit of introducing higher power levels. Further, DSL deployment has progressed substantially in rural areas since Ofcom started this work to the extent that 99.6% of all UK households can now get data rates of 512kbits/s or higher. Therefore, there is now much less need for these services to provide broadband in rural areas. After careful consideration of the evidence presented to us by stakeholders we have concluded not to progress with allowing higher powers at 2.4GHz in rural areas.
"1.4 Concerning our proposal to adopt the higher power limit of four watts EIRP (in all geographical areas), from the draft ECC Recommendation (06) 04 in 5.8GHz, this had fair support and we are proposing to implement this by updating the relevant licence documentation for the band.
"1.5 Concerning the change of licence specification from radiated to conducted power, there was a mixed reaction, but those that were supportive generally felt that we should make any such change through European bodies rather than in the UK alone. We will therefore investigate the possibility of this concept being explored at a European level..."
It was surprising that the proposals for 2.4GHz "gained only limited support even from the communities that might be expected to embrace them," as Ofcom observed. The Community Broadband Networks said: "Overwhelmingly CBN members are not in favour of any generalised increase in power. Even in rural areas the spectrum is getting crowded." Scotland's Connected Communities Network supported a power increase at 5GHz but were "silent about 2.4GHz." And most disappointingly, the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) "welcomed higher powers at 2.4GHz but only in 'not spots' - areas with no DSL coverage, rather than all rural areas, and with the 'not spots' regularly reviewed and removed as DSL provision emerged."
Ofcom had hired Scientific Generics Ltd. to analyze the economic consequences of higher power allowances for unlicensed WLANs, and their report supported the idea of raising the power limit for 2.4GHz networks utilising narrowbeam antennas to 50 watts EIRP in rural areas. The net economic benefit from such an increase was said to be £539 million, even taking into account the cost of additional interference. But many commenters ignored or rejected these arguments, aborting what could have been a very important policy test.
[WLANs - 21 November 2006]