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Broadband Fixed Wireless Access - Minutes |
First Meeting of the Broadband Fixed Wireless Access Technical Group Held at Wyndham House on 11 February 2000
Those Present:
Barry Lewis Chairman RA
I Agenda |
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| 1. | Mr Lewis added documents BFWAtg(00)7 to item 7 (Future work), BFWAtg(00)8/9/12 to item 8 (AOB), and BFWAtg(00)10/11 to item 5 (complementary CEPT activities) of the agenda. The agenda was agreed. | ||
II Terms of reference - BFWAtg(00)01 |
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| 2. | A BFWGtg member asked whether the Terms of reference should include timescales. Mr Lewis said that this was not required as the technical group would have ongoing interaction with the Consultative Group. | ||
| 3. | It was agreed that, whenever possible, members would receive documents via email up to two days prior to meetings and attendees would be expected to bring their own copies for use at the meetings, otherwise paper copies would be provided at the meeting. The Terms of reference were agreed with a minor amendment to this effect. | ||
| III Completion of review of BFWACG(00)4 - BFWAtg(00)02 | |||
| 4. | Mr Lewis reviewed the 40GHz issues within this document which had not been covered at the Consultative Group meeting on 14 January. A BFWGtg member asked about sharing with Satellite services at 40GHz. Mr Lewis said that this was an agenda item at WRC in May. The European Common Position on this topic could be made available to the group. A BFWGtg member thought, as we were trying to achieve a tight timetable, that it could be worth considering any impact that FS/FSS sharing might have on the 40GHz plan. Mr Lewis said that he would put together an information document on the current position. Action: Mr Lewis | ||
| 5. | A BFWAtg member asked whether the Agency saw licence areas at 40GHz being similar to 28GHz or the same size? Local Delivery Operators (LDOs) intended for their equipment to match BFWA. Mr Lewis said that the size of areas and number of licences had not yet been decided. Although, he would prefer larger regions to minimise the co-ordination burden. The Agency had now appointed Market Consultants to provide advice on these issues. A BFWAtg member expressed his concern if the areas were rather larger then LDOs because of co-ordination. A BFWAtg member felt that the regions should be based on areas of population with a certain amount of geographical engineering. Mr Lewis said that this issue would be further covered under the Aegis presentation also on the agenda but that detailed co-ordination could be left to operators. | ||
| Technology Neutral | |||
| 6. | Mr Lewis said that the general reaction, so far from members, was that they would prefer the 40GHz licensing process to be technology neutral. BFWAtg members raised the following points: | ||
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Technological neutrality was fine to the extent that existing standards should not be compromised. At 40GHz it might be difficult to accommodate the differing technology characteristics. | ||
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Any bandwidth made available should not place undue restrictions on the type of service that an operator may deliver. | ||
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Standards should not be the "tail that wags the dog". If they were not up to scratch then a new solution should be considered. | ||
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Spectrum efficiency and standards compliance should be encouraged. Several members pointed out that radio equipment development continues at a pace and reminded that decisions taken now would need to be appropriate for the next 20 years or so. | ||
| Spectrum Packaging | |||
| 7. | A BFWAtg member pointed out that a lot of work had already been carried out in Europe at 26GHz so perhaps the group could take some ideas from them. The Agency had still not addressed his question put to the Consultative Group why 26Ghz was not the chosen band for BFWA. | ||
IV Summary of Responses to questions following BFWACG - BFWAtg(00)06 |
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| 8. | Mr Lewis took the group through the responses. A BFWAtg member asked when the market advisors would be on board. Mr Lewis explained that the Agency had now appointed consultants who would be present at the next BFWA Consultative Group meeting on 14 February. A BFWAtg member mentioned that question 1a should have stated that the CEPT band plan was T/R13-02. | ||
| Infrastructure | |||
| 9. | A BFWAtg members raised the following points: | ||
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No reason why point to multipoint could not be used as part of infrastructure. | ||
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Point to point could not be excluded from the link budget point of view. | ||
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To keep co-ordination requirements simple these issues should be passed down to operators. | ||
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Accommodating the infrastructure within the BFWA spectrum would be efficient use of spectrum. | ||
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If the end user used the spectrum for back hauling would that be regarded as BFWA. | ||
| 10. | Mr Lewis suggested that these questions needed to be put to the Consultative Group if a clearer definition was required. He asked whether point to point links used in the 28GHz and 40GHz bands could abide by the same co-ordination guidelines as the FWA systems. | ||
V Complimentary CEPT Activities - BFWAtg(00)04, BFWAtg(00)05, BFWAtg(00)10 & BFWAtg(00)11SE19(99)195 rev 4 Report (BFWAtg(00)05) & SE19(99)131 rev 10 Recommendation – (BFWAtg(00)04) |
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11. |
A BFWAtg member reported that this draft recommendation was aimed at the regulator and was still under development at the last meeting two weeks ago. Its hoped that it will be approved at the next WG-SE meeting in April. The draft recommendation tackles spectrum assignment advice for FWA in the 24.5 – 26.5GHz band. It recommends contiguous assignments based upon 28MHz slots, guardbands, and co-ordination distance between neighbouring areas. A SE19 correspondence group has been collating and resolving final comments on the draft recommendation and accompanying report from members before submitting to WG-SE for approval. Mr Lewis highlighted that the preliminary report covered both the 26GHz and 28GHz bands and therefore is expected to be used as a basis for a similar draft recommendation for the 28GHz band. Some members expressed concerns with the detail in the report and these concerns were highlighted to the RA WG-SE representative If further work was needed it would be extremely important that a substantive input was generated for the next SE19 meeting and input from members was urged. He invited general comments on the recommendation/report especially with a view to possible applicability to the 28GHz band. Action: Members/Mr Lewis | ||
| Band Segmentation Combined with Geographical Segmentation 27.5-29.5GHz BFWAtg(00)10 | |||
| 12. | Mr Lewis introduced his paper and informed members that this draft band plan accompanied the Draft ERC Decision for the 28GHz band developed by CEPT FM34. He invited comments from members. Action: Members | ||
| Draft ERC decision for the Band 27.5-29.5GHz - BFWAtg(00)11 | |||
| 13. | Mr Lewis pointed out that there were three stages that the Decision had to go through before final agreement to go forward into the ERC process:- FM34 in March, WG-FM in April and was subject to agreement on outstanding technical issues at SE19 in April. He invited comments from members. Action: Members | ||
VI Presentation of inter-operator co-ordination work by Aegis Systems – BFWAtg(00)03 |
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| 14. | Mr Burns of Aegis Systems, gave a short presentation on the co-ordination work carried out by Aegis Systems. The work basically proposes and justifies co-ordination zones along the edge of service/license area boundaries and guard bands between adjacent frequency assignments in the same region in both the 28GHz and 40GHz bands. Some specific points were made by members but generally the work was well received. Mr Lewis said that the group now needed to decide how to take forward the Aegis work into the licensing process, providing potential license holders with broad guidelines based upon this work and then advice on detailed co-ordination suitable for inter-operator co-operation. There was general agreement in the meeting with this approach and Mr Goodyear said that he was currently developing guidelines for FWA. A BFWAtg member said that document 100 raised within SE19 held very useful material on the FWA guidelines. Mr Lewis agreed to circulate this document to members. He also asked members to look at the Aegis report in detail and let him have comments. Action: Members/Mr Lewis | ||
VII Future Work (BFWAtg(00)07) |
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| 15. | Mr Lewis said that he would develop this document into an "issues list" which would be used as a living list in order to update the Consultative Group. | ||
VIII Any other Business |
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Fixed Radio Systems: Radio
equipment for use in Multimedia Wireless |
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| 16. | A BFWAtg member reported that this ETSI work item had been opened last June within TM4 and a draft had now been produced. There were lots of unresolved matters on which he would welcome comments from members. The report was linked to SE19 and the ETSI BRAN HIPERACCESS project. An interim TM4 meeting was to be held in two weeks time which might address his rapporteur notes. It could take another year before the document had final approval. An antenna specification was also to be produced by the end of the year. Mr Lewis mentioned that there was a general RA TM4 preparatory meeting within the Agency on 16 February run by Barry Goodyear which would continue to be the main forum for discussion of TM4 inputs. Action: Members | ||
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The Radio Equipment and Telecommunications Terminal Equipment (R&TTE) Directive 99/5/EC – BFWAtg(00)9 |
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| Mr Lewis said that Jim Nixon was looking into the interface requirements within the RTTE Directive which members would need to begin addressing. | |||
| XI Date of Next Meeting | |||
| The next meeting would be held on 24 March at 10.30am at Wyndham House. | |||
| Organisation | Contact |
| Albera Networks | Iain Brodie |
| Alcatel | Jonathan Steel |
| Atlantic Telecom | Chris Cant |
| B.T | Paul Grant |
| Broadband Wireless Association | John Norbury |
| Cable & Wireless | Tom King |
| Digital Microwave corp. | Peter Gibson |
| Eircom | Stephen Czudej |
| Ericsson | John McPherson |
| Eurobell | Stephen Lowe |
| Federation Of Electronics Industry | Simon Wilson |
| First Mark Comm | Roy Titchmarsh |
| Fujitsu | David Palmer |
| Highway One corp | David Pearson |
| Hughes Network Systems | Arthur Christian |
| Kingston Comm | Mike Crowther |
| Media Channel | Neil Harris |
| Motorola | Tim Cull |
| Newbridge Networks | Tim Walsh |
| Nortel Networks | Graham Macdonald |
| Norweb Telecom | David Mckone |
| Ogier Electronics | Len Ogier |
| Orange | Robin Whitfield |
| P-Com | John Wood |
| Radiant Networks | Phil Whitehead |
| Scientific Generics | Paul Beastall |
| Tele2 UK | Donald Pierce |
| Telia UK Ltd | Mats Ohman |
| The Convergence Group | Peter Williams |
| TTP Comm | Dr.John Haine |
| Worldpipe | Paul Beestall |
| R.A. | Jim Nixon |
| R.A. | Barry Goodyear |
| R.A. | Jackie O`Mahoney |
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RA2/BFWA |
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