ComReg says broadband spectrum maxed out in Dublin

damien

http://www.yourtechstuff.com/techwire/2006/05/wireless_broadb.html

They should widen those exclusion zones then. </sarcasm>

Urban Weigl

That means that punters had better like the current offerings, because there won't be any new entrants to the market...

To be fair, they do say that they are, and I quote, "looking for new spectrum". The search is on. I am guessing that you can alert ComReg on 01 8049600 if you find any.

crawler

But there is no demand for Broadband </sarcasm> X2

I think to be fair - they are talking more in terms of the spectrum that has been available to date in standard bands...

I may not be popular for saying this but in fairness to Comreg - they did make the spectrum available, it's up to operators to make the most efficient use of it, for their own sake. For example frequency planning, V & H polarization, N+x reuse patterns etc....Spectrum is a finite resource...

** Quickly ducks under the covers and goes into hiding ** (well would ya look at that, just found a mad chunk of spectrum at 70Ghz hiding under here, and look some MMDS spectrum is over there too!...now where is that phone...)

Also on spectrum and an Update on Metro 20 - Tallaght now live (covers Lucan, Celbridge, parts of Leixlip etc ) and Carlow now live...18 more to go...

damien

crawler wrote:

...18 more to go...

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

crawler

It's just like "lost" we all crashed on an Island with no broadband and slowly but surely the secrets are being revealed...

I really need to get a life... Wonder did Robert Frost get a life?

Ah, we will get there, we always do.....just takes a wee bit of time...

bminish

Spectrum is a finite resource and needs to be carefully managed.
Comreg are not managing it well nor do they seem to have much of a notion about how best to manage spectrum.

a few points that spring immediately to mind

1/ there is an awful lot of very valuable spectrum that is just being sat on by various parties, Eircom in particular have a number of very valuable allocations that are underutilised. There are also blocks of spectrum earmarked for 3G expansion at some future date yet it is most uncertain that the demand will ever be there in most areas.
Quite a lot of the sub 3 ghz Point to Point allocations could possibly be freed up by encouraging the (mostly legacy system) users to move to higher frequency links and use more spectrally efficient coding systems.

2/ The exclusion zones on the 3.5 and 10 Ghz bands are simply daft and demonstrate a complete failure to understand proper spectrum management. What other regulator has created a licencing regime that potentially denies coverage to an area 4 times greater than that area which is being licenced for...
Instead of exclusion zones there should be a requirement for adjacent operators to carry out voluntary frequency co-ordination, where this fails to work adequately then Spectrum management consultants get brought in at the operator's expense to bang heads.
Allocation areas should also take into account terrain and population factors and there should be proper stipulated coverage requirements to prevent spectrum 'camping'

3/ Existing operators need to resuse spectrum more effectively as user density grows. This requires good RF engineering on the operators part and some operators may already have created a mess for themselves in this area but it's their responsibility to sort it out.
The GSM industry has already had to deal with this as it moved to smaller cell sizes.
Hand in hand with this issue the gov and comreg need to tackle the Anti-Mast lobby head on and inject some rational debate back into the current farcical situation which makes it so hard to erect new wireless infrastructure in this country.

4/ We need to be very careful about any moves towards spectrum trading, this has created a real mess in the United States where it has led to a lot of spectrum being bought up to remain unused to keep others out of the market. Spectrum is a scarce resource and needs to be managed in the best interests of the nation as a whole as well as within the framework of EU wide spectrum management policies.

.brendan

watty

More masts = less power = safer (if there even was a problem).

Some systems at the same band are 16:1 different in spectrum efficency.

While COFDM is really of best use below 1Ghz, it does also alow smaller guard bands allowing 4% increase in specral efficency at same overall FEC / QAM.