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Wireless Agenda
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"Power levels in rural areas" has long been an issue for those working on the ground using no-licence wireless to make broadband a reality in remote and rural areas.
This was for instance one of the main issues raised by delegates at the ABC1 Rural and Regional Broadband Conference (July 03), and again at the ABC2 Revolution at the Edge: Broadband Networks and Innovation Conference (Jan 04).
The recent BSG Third Annual Report and Strategic Recommendations to government included a recommendation for OFCOM to "introduce geographically differentiated regulation to increase the EIRP level at 2.4 GHZ to enable the use of directional antenna in rural areas to achieve greater range." (cf. section 4.2.2 Wireless, esp. p95 and Recommendation 1) See BSG website and Annual Report: http://www.broadbanduk.org This relates to the FCC's practice in the US.
OFCOM are now addressing this issue of power levels in rural areas, with regard to the wider user environment for 2.4 GHz no-licence radio spectrum. Accordingly OFCOM have recently drawn up a questionnaire for interested parties to provide feedback for its policy review.
"What we want to gain from responses (to the questionnaire) is an indication of users' requirements that would help us in our further work", says a source from OFCOM. "This work is to assess whether we could meet users' requirements - fully or partially - without causing interference problems for other users in the band (including other RLAN or FWA users). We shall have to undertake a full engineering assessment and the responses will help us focus this work on how people actually want to use the band".
ABC is pleased to hand this questionnnaire onto its supporters, many of whom are engaged in community wireless networking.
HAVE YOUR SAY NOW on how you would like to be able to use the 2.4GHz licence-exempt band.
Download the Word doc here
ABC will be pleased to collate all the Questionnaire responses received, to present to the spectrum management team at OFCOM. Please respond ASAP!
We also look forward to providing you with an update on OFCOM's review of this keen topic of interest.
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