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the UK has held a leading position in opening up the market for broadband wireless and in the development of technology for the 40 GHz band, but is in danger of not maintaining this lead;
interest in broadband wireless is growing rapidly in the USA and in continental Europe, with the UK seen as an important market;
encouragement of broadband wireless will quickly enhance competition in telecommunications, allowing new operators to enter the market;
without ready and economic forms of network for broadband interactive services, new services based on Internet applications and electronic commerce will develop more slowly, with less beneficial economic effects for the UK;
swift resolution of the way forward on broadband wireless would underpin the UK Government’s commitments to encourage technological development, increase competition and secure an international competitive advantage, all of which are core objectives in the Competitiveness White Paper 1998;
there is only a short window of opportunity, possibly less than a year, for the UK to take and maintain a strong position in broadband wireless.
A new licensing regime for broadband wireless is urgently required. This regime should permit interactive broadband applications, with maximum flexibility for licensees to develop and carry new types of service.
A stable, simple and unified regulatory environment for service providers should be put in place.
The full 3 GHz of spectrum from 40.5 - 43.5 GHz should be licensed for broadband wireless in a uniform and consistent manner, but temporary allocations at frequencies such as 28GHz should be made to enable trials and early market applications to be developed.
The existing technical standards (MPT 1560 and 1561) should be extended to cover broadband symmetric and asymmetric interactive applications.
A licensing process should be set up as soon as possible to enable serious operators to refine hardware, test billing systems, and develop user interfaces and navigation systems for services.
The target time for license applications to commence should be no later than mid-99.
Spectrum Management Advisory Group Background Paper on Broadband Wireless
1. Delivery of entertainment, television and video education services at microwave frequencies by line-of-sight broadcast links is not new, having originated in the USA some decades ago. This transmission technology has been pursued to a limited extent in a variety of countries (such as Canada, the Irish Republic, Mexico and parts of Eastern Europe) since that time, but without a commonality of technical standards or transmission frequencies.
2. In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the USA for the use of broadband wireless transmission at frequencies around 28GHz, the applications being multi-channel television and fast Internet services. Meanwhile, in Europe, attempts to harmonise activities in the 2 GHz spectrum allocation from 40.5 GHz to 42.5 GHz and achieve common digital transmission standards based on the DVB specifications resulted in a draft ERC decision in February 1999 to designate a full 3 GHz of spectrum in this band. Following early trials of a broadband wireless system by BT, Eurobell has been the main operator in the UK to install such a system as an adjunct to their cable network. Trial systems have also been put in place in countries such as Germany and Switzerland. The relatively slow uptake of this technology into wide commercial use, however, may in part have resulted from the lack of maturity and the anticipated cost of the high-frequency microwave technology, but undoubtedly the difficulty of creating a viable business plan based on microwave delivery of one-way multi-channel television services alone has been the major obstacle.
3. The key advantage of operating at these high microwave frequencies is the amount of spectrum that is available, easily adequate for the stimulation and development of bandwidth-hungry applications such as video communications. In order to open up the use of this frequency band and promote competition in the delivery of broadband services, SMAG recommends that the band should be licensed as quickly as possible to allow two-way or interactive broadband services covering all media applications.
4. The UK took the lead internationally in establishing technical standards and promoting the use of this frequency band, with the aim of facilitating broadband service delivery as well as developing new service and manufacturing industries. There is now a danger that the exploitation of this spectrum and the economic benefits that derive from this will proceed faster in continental Europe and the USA than in the UK. A relatively short window of opportunity remains for the UK to capitalise on its early position and expertise gained.
5. Although hopes have been expressed for the use of conventional copper twisted-pair networks at bandwidths of several Mbit/s, it seems unlikely that such technology will ever have more than niche applications. Without ready and low-cost availability of broadband interactive delivery systems by a new technology, the economic opportunities that will derive from a number of Internet applications and electronic commerce could be stifled or progress more slowly than could be the case. Potentially, this could undermine the commitment made in the Competitiveness White Paper 1998, to ‘ensure that, by 2002, the UK provides the best environment in the world for electronic trading.’
7. It is important to consider how broadband wireless delivery fits into an overall structure of spectrum use. Because of the convenience of mobile communication technologies, there is likely to be a steady drift from wired to wireless delivery solutions, the rate of that migration being strongly influenced by the economics of use. Given adequate spectrum, mobile communications will steadily increase in bandwidth capability, but the cost-benefit relationship may result in the mobile communications market, as it moves through second and third generation systems (such as UMTS), concentrating on applications that require channel bandwidths of significantly less than 1Mbit/s (e-mail, data or information access, and certain e-commerce).
8. By contrast, broadband wireless delivery, used in an interactive point-to-point or point-to-multipoint situation, is best suited to the applications requiring data rates above 1Mbit/s (television, videoconferencing, more comprehensive e-commerce, high-speed Internet), but can also handle accompanying lower rate data and speech information.
9. By around 2003, it is anticipated that low earth orbit (LEO) satellite delivery systems, such as Teledesic, will have the capability to provide global broadband interactivity to terminals suited to home office or mainstream commercial and telecommunications hub use. A plausible economic model, however, is the use of such satellite systems in conjunction with broadband microwave delivery, the latter dealing more efficiently with concentrated traffic which has local customisation or originates and terminates locally.
10. Broadband wireless thus has the potential to fit neatly into an overall structure of efficient spectrum management.
11. Despite a draft ERC decision to harmonise 40.5 to 43.5 GHz for the introduction of Multimedia Wireless Systems a unified worldwide or even European position has yet to be achieved. There is considerable support among operators for the 28 GHz band because of the more readily available equipment and the longer transmission ranges that can be achieved, yet there is not the same amount of bandwidth available to allow flexibility for growth in applications. A coherent position for the use and management of the spectrum is required, possibly with some early and temporary allocations at 28 GHz, but with a defined migration policy for such allocations to the 40 GHz band.
Spectrum Management Advisory Group
March 1999
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