Posted: 07th Mar, 2003 By: MarkJ
It's feared that the rollout of broadband wireless in rural areas could be hampered if the government licenses part of the 5GHz radio spectrum for itself.
Pressure from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) means that 5.8GHz probably won't be licence-exempt:
There has been growing concern within the broadband community since this was made public a few weeks ago.
Band C is currently primarily used for military radar, and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has refused to allow this spectrum to become licence-exempt. Instead, the MoD is insisting on a number of restrictions, including forcing operators to register all their users and pay a fee to the Radiocommunications Agency (RA).
Several groups of local activists have already launched fixed broadband networks running at 2.4GHz -- which the government deregulated last summer -- and some of these people believe that 5GHz would be an even better frequency at which to run a community network, if it was licence-exempt.While a final decision has yet to be made, there can be no denying that the MoD is in a good position to control the terms of any Band C use. More @
ZDNet.