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Wireless Networking The Internet Hardware

UK Approves of 5.8GHz For Rural Broadband 111

Posted by Hemos from the making-best-use-of-the-air-waves dept.
Tandoori Haggis writes "BBC News reports a major decision by UK Government to approve the use of 5.8 GHz C-band for use with wireless broadband. A prime consideration is the desire to provide broadband access for rural areas where broadband cable might be prohibitively expensive to impliment. Previously there had been resistance to freeing up 5.8GHz because it is in an area of the RF spectrum used by C-band radars."
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UK Approves of 5.8GHz For Rural Broadband More

UK Approves of 5.8GHz For Rural Broadband

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  • An article with more details... (Score:5, Informative)

    by tcopeland ( 32225 ) * <tom AT thomasleecopeland DOT com> on Monday December 29, 2003 @12:03PM (#7827849) Homepage
    ...on the issues involved in deregulating this part of the spectrum can be found here [zdnet.co.uk].

    • Re:An article with more details... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Tony Hoyle ( 11698 ) <tmh@nodomain.org> on Monday December 29, 2003 @12:06PM (#7827875) Homepage
      ... which contradicts the slashdot headline completely.

      The real story appears to be that the frequency will *not* be deregulated - you'll still have to apply for a license. The difference is now you have a slight hope of getting one.
      • Right, it's an older story - but it does give more details on why this was a controversial move. Good background info and all that.
      • Actually I think it will be much more like CB Radio which also requires a license (the CB license is free for those over 14 and under 21, 15 GBP for others).

        It's not that you'll have slightly more chance, you'll be entitled to use that part of the radio spectrum if you purchase a license.

        It's maybe worth noting that CB equipment has to be compliant with UK standards for use in the UK - it's possible there could be a process where apparatus needs to be approved for use in the UK before you're allowed to p

    • The Ofcom release goes beyond the March article, but not far enough in explaining the details.

      They have adopted "light touch" licensing, which will be an on-line process, with a fee of one quid per user, fifty quid minimum. Hardly the type of fees garnered in the 3G auctions! It seems to me that this is primarily intended to keep track of the units, in case there's interference to a radar installation.

      What's missing from the press release, or ofcom's web site (that I can see), are details like power lim
      • Yes - very light on details, especially EIRP - if it's just 100mw - like the 802.11b spectrum (which it may well be, due to the MoD's concerns about radar) then I can't see any point in using it - may as well stick with the cheaper 2.4GHz 802.11b technology. There's no appreciable 2.4GHz interference in rural areas anyway..

        EIRP is a stupid idea IMHO - a directed beam at higher power levels is far less likely to cause interference than an isotropic radiator. The US rules make some allowance for this on 80

  • Read up... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29, 2003 @12:03PM (#7827853)
    They should read up on hack proofing their networks, in that case.

    More info [blat.info].

  • Great last mile solution.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by micker ( 668555 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @12:08PM (#7827891) Homepage
    This is great, we need to see it here in the States. This would help with Last mile issues out west or in the farmlands. Or, I could use this from my apartment and still get a signal at my favorite bar.... I like that...
    • A portion of the 5ghz band has already been de-regulated and is used by the 802.11a equipment. The problem is that there needs to be incentive (read profit more than cost) for them to implement it since they are private companies.

      • Re:Already done (Score:5, Insightful)

        by VaderPi ( 680682 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @12:23PM (#7827994) Homepage
        The problem is that there needs to be incentive (read profit more than cost) for them to implement it since they are private companies.
        It is situations like this where local governments (or even, gasp, the federal government) should provide infrastructure for its constituents. If interstate highway development were left to private companies, I bet that it would be much more difficult to get orders from the West to East coast via ground transportation in seven days. As soon as governments recognize that Internet access is a form of infrastructure for communication and commerce things might improve here in the US.
        • If interstate highway development were left to private companies, I bet that it would be much more difficult to get orders from the West to East coast via ground transportation in seven days

          Umm... Interstate highway development WAS left to private compaines, and yet, we CAN go from coast to coast in less than 50 hours (at the speed limit, even...) Read this [lp.org] and then give me something that contradicts:

          The best way to understand the notion of private roads is to examine America's own era of private tur

          • If the private efforts were so successful then why was it that "[by] the late 1930s, the pressure for construction of transcontinental superhighways was building." [ link [tfhrc.gov], tfhrc.gov]

            There were no private efforts to build an interstate highway system. That had to be left up to the federal government.

            There is some infrastructure that private companies cannot provide, because it is very hard (some might claim impossible) to get a business model that produces a profit. This is very true in the case of the "

            • He should have asked:
              When was the last time traffic / bandwidth increased on the roads near you before traffic jams became major?

              From your link:
              (1) to relieve congestion between Christiansburg and Blacksburg...

              A government will only provide you the minimal service, it's up to you (the consumer) to hire a private company to get better service.

        • It is situations like this where local governments (or even, gasp, the federal government) should provide infrastructure for its constituents

          Labelling the internet access as infrastructure doesn't qualify government provision. The proper argument is: public provision is one of the solutions when the social benefit outweight the social cost but there is no private incentive for private provision. There was no private incentive to build interstate highway because it was difficult to charge users.

          But is w
    • 802.16 will handle the last mile, it will go 22 miles and be ratified next year.
    • This is why it Needs to be Regulated :)... Any Average Joe Using these Frequency's knock down usability and range.. If its set aside for a Purpose for Rural Boardband only people Providing this service should be able to use this portion of the spectrum.
    • We have something like this in the states. 802.11 wireless towers are popping up everywhere. In chicago there is a company DLS that provides a symmetric 10mbit connection for 65/month.

  • C Band Radar for Defense? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nharmon ( 97591 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @12:12PM (#7827914)
    From the article:

    [i]"The Ministry of Defence had resisted opening up the spectrum because it has radar systems operating in Band C of the 5GHz part of the spectrum."[/i]

    Perhaps the UK should stop using C band radars for military purposes, and get with the times by upgrading to L-band or X-band radar.

    C-band is acceptabe for weather radar, but even then, you would be more worried about weather radar obstructing broadband connections...not the other way around.

    • C-band is acceptabe for weather radar, but even then, you would be more worried about weather radar obstructing broadband connections...not the other way around.


      Some people care what the weather is like. For your information, the use of polarmetric C-band weather radar, was the major reason that Japan had only 100MHz of 5GHz bandwidth for their systems. They have since opened some spectrum up at 4.9GHz.


      D.

    • Perhaps the UK should stop using C band radars for military purposes, and get with the times by upgrading to L-band or X-band radar.
      The UK does use X and L band radar, it just happens to use C band radar as well; and I would bet dollars to doughnuts that the US Government still uses C band somewhere in its infrastructure.
      • Sure, why not? Modern radar is not that likely to be affected by low-power communication devices however, due to special techniques such as spreading which is coming to datacom, like it or not.

        L-band (1.7 - 4.2 GHz) offers longer range.

        X-band (8.0 - 12.4 GHz) has much finer resolution which certainly gets better for Ku, K and Ka band systems. The higher frequency systems are more prone to weather however.

        C-band (4.2 - 8.0GHz) is a good compromise between range and target resolution.

  • line of sight (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Uma Thurman ( 623807 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @12:12PM (#7827917) Homepage Journal
    Wouldn't that be line-of-sight communication? This sort of thing would need a big tower to cover a big area. The solar-powered airplane hovering over the area would be a nice solution to that problem.

    Anyway, how well would this work if the line-of-sight to the base station was through a neighbor's brick house? Not well I would think.
    • The solar-powered airplane hovering over the area would be a nice solution to that problem.

      Until the first thunderstorm pops up and knocks it down like the Helios.

      Theres an old saying in flying:
      A thunderstorm is natures way of saying up yours.

    • "Anyway, how well would this work if the line-of-sight to the base station was through a neighbor's brick house? Not well I would think." - Except you'd have an antenna on your roof, which would work well.

    • Re:line of sight (Score:4, Insightful)

      by thedillybar ( 677116 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @12:41PM (#7828107)
      Sure, the transmitting antenna should be very high. To establish line-of-sight though, you'd probably be fine with your antenna being 10 or 20 feet above your roof.

      FM radio is line-of-sight too...and you don't lose everything when you're parked next to a brick house. Don't expect tree branches blowing across to severely affect your signal strength.

      • Re:line of sight (Score:4, Informative)

        by wass ( 72082 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @03:55PM (#7829658)
        FM radio is line-of-sight too...and you don't lose everything when you're parked next to a brick house.

        You're ignoring diffraction, which of course is more obvious at larger wavelengths. FM radio seems more line-of-sight than AM because the smaller wavelength bends around properly-sized objects (read people-sized houses and small hills) less well.

        An FM radio signal (about 100 MHz) has a wavelength of roughly 3 meters. Some brick houses aren't that much larger than this, so you'll can get some diffraction around the house.

        A 5.8 GHz signal has a wavelength of about 1/60 this, or roughly 5 cm. So yes, expect much smaller objects to significantly obscure your receival of the transmission.

        Finally, what really matters is the index of refraction of whatever material is 'obscuring' the signal. I'm not really sure, but I would guess that wood and brick would be more opaque at 5.8 GHz C band than at 100 MHz.

    • solar powered airplane eh?

      Have you seen the amount of rain and cloud Britain gets?
      • The idea is that these solar powered airplanes fly at 60K feet or higher, well above the weather. They would fly a tight loop above a city or region, like a very low communications satellite.

  • Cheap? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dave1g ( 680091 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @12:13PM (#7827920) Journal
    "Opening this band is expected to boost the development of fixed wireless access services, such as low cost internet access in areas not currently reached by broadband services," said the DTI in a statement. "

    Isn't fixed wireless in the states actually pretty expensive? How are they going to do it cheaply in the UK?

    I thought the real selling point of fixed wireless was that these rural areas finally get to have access, and, being deprived of anything near as fast, would pay a relatively high price for it.

    • Isn't fixed wireless in the states actually pretty expensive?

      Isn't internet access in UK expensive to begin with?
      And what's the cost on the wireless adapter that suports this frequency?

      Looks like the rural citizens are going to have to take out a second mortage and sell the cows to be able to downloadd ROTK in less then 3 days!

      • Not really. these guys [1stbroadband.com] sell 2mbit wireless internet connections for peanuts.

        The only problem is its only available in deepest darkest cornwall. Seems a bit silly that a bunch of farmers and fishermen out in the back of beyond can get better internet than I can in the biggest city in the southwest of the UK!
    • It's only $35/month (768/128) in my area. You can pay up to $80 for 1.5/512. This doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Comparable to DSL, and that's not available to me.

  • military (Score:3, Insightful)

    by powlow ( 197142 ) <powlow.gmail@com> on Monday December 29, 2003 @12:17PM (#7827951) Homepage Journal
    crazy to share the band with the military...it realy does seem like licensing without guarantee of service...

    The military can shut you down and creat exclusion zones, you have to pay and there is no gurantee of service and they could theoretically raise the licensing fee at a later date. Seems like shaky ground to me.

    • Re:military (Score:5, Insightful)

      by WolfWithoutAClause ( 162946 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @12:31PM (#7828043) Homepage
      crazy to share the band with the military...

      'Sfunny that's true of GPS too. GPS is still a useful system; yes, you can theoretically get stomped on.

      it realy does seem like licensing without guarantee of service...

      Yes, well, neither does the internet.

      The military can shut you down and creat exclusion zones

      Yes, well, that's life. If it is really bad you complain to your politician.

      and they could theoretically raise the licensing fee at a later date

      Yes. Death and Taxes.

    • ISM (Score:2)

      by Detritus ( 11846 )
      It's better than being in an unlicensed ISM (Industrial, Scientific and Medical) band, along with wireless telephones, microwave ovens, and all sorts of industrial and commercial RF gadgets.

      I don't know if the rules are similar in the UK, but in the USA, a licensed user has legal protection against interference from unlicensed users.

  • The newer cordless phones are using 5.8GHz. Won't someone think of them?
  • what is the max bandwidth for 5.8GHz c-band?

    • Re:question (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If you stay in the C-band and you consider C-band to be 4-8GHz, then it's 3.6GHz of bandwidth [2*(5.8-4)]. Of course the UK isn't giving up the entire C-band to 5.8GHz. I can't find the exact range they are allocating.

    • Re:question (Score:3, Informative)

      by The One KEA ( 707661 )
      It depends on the signal encoding and protocols transmitted on that band. In this case, 5.8GHz is an additional signal band being added to the group of signal bands utilized by the IEEE 802.11a and 802.11g standards. The encoding used by those standards (Orthogonal Frequency Divison Multiplexing, link [rwth-aachen.de]) allows for a maximum clean-room EM-free speed of 54Mbps. In reality, once you factor in interference, equipment quality and distance, you can only really reach approxmiately 20Mbps, which will still outstrip
  • with the wireless service already available in some parts of the country - http://www.pipexcommunications.net/products/wirele ss_broadband/

    It started life as tele2, then it became liberty broadband, then gxn networks and now pipex.
  • This would be great for my Grandad who can't get xDSL (BT won't upgrade the telephone exchange) or cable (too remote). He lives in Lancashire, on the snow line of a hill where the telephone line is abysmal. I sure as hell know that he'd love to get away from AOL.

    The only thing is, will this be a practical solution? In the hills and valleys will the signal be strong enough? Will it reach down into the valleys? I barely get mobile reception when I'm there!

    Alex

    • I spent the last two years doing call-out tech support for companies in rural Cotswolds, UK and I've seen several satellite broadband installations.

      Each and every time it has been slower than a modem, let alone ISDN.

      The problem isn't bandwidth, it's latency. Satellite ping times are in excess of 1500ms - sometimes as much as 4000ms. That compares to modem pings of 200-300, ISDN 60-150 and ADSL 30-80.

      If you intend to download a small number of very, very large files (eg. FTP) then satellite broadband is g
      • I use Starband an sat broadband company in the US, and the parent is mostly right. Starband uses a "accelerator" proxy which helps http traffic greatly. Using this, you click a link in the browser, nothing happens for 1-3 secs and then the page floods down. Takes a little to get used to but very usable. Without the proxy, http is very painful.

        Starband also has problems with P2P, CVS, rsync. In general, it is last (only) choice option, but it is better than dialup.

  • "The Ministry of Defence had resisted opening up the spectrum because it has radar systems operating in Band C of the 5GHz part of the spectrum."

    Does anyone know why they stopped resisting?

  • TBH with all this I wouldn't be surprised that if licenses were gratned to someone that area would suddenly get ADSL from BT (the main supplier of phone lines in the UK).

    Rus
    • No. BT has said that all of the areas that cannot get wired are unprofitable. They're not making it up. It's the truth, and they will not become magically profitable when a cheaper technology comes along.

      If you had bothered to read the article, BT is first in line testing the new technology.
      • You're using a very odd definition of "profitable" if you think that profit is not affected by a drop in costs.
  • I hope this doesn't carry over to the US.

    I just purchased a 5.8 GHz phone because my 2.4 GHz phone was interfering with wireless network.

    I don't want to have to drop back to a 900 MHz phone because of networking.

  • giant dish? (Score:3, Funny)

    by cloudmaster ( 10662 ) on Monday December 29, 2003 @12:58PM (#7828213) Homepage Journal
    Hooray! I knew that if I kept that 8 foot C-band dish up in the backyard, it'd someday come back into style! All those neighbors who've laughed at my giant dish will again be envious, just like in the 80's...
  • Living in the UK, I'm able to distinguish between what is actually said, and what will be done. As with most things over here, it's all good and well in theory. The rollout of Broadband in the UK has been a sham, and the government has done little to help, despite its claims of a "broadband Britain". For such a small (Geographically) country, this should of been a doddle, but the soon to be out-dated technology is what we're sticking to. I reckon it'll be 2005 before wireless access is made commercially ava
  • Wish they put a sys like that in Seattle
  • ...of speeding in rural areas, anyway...

    "Previously there had been resistance to freeing up 5.8GHz because it is in an area of the RF spectrum used by C-band radars."
  • I'm starting to wonder if these initiatives are going to piss off the mobile operators who paid billions for the 3G licenses.

    Changes like this, and wireless POPs are taking away some of the incentives to upgrade to 3G phones (for me, data is more important than video messages - and if I have to find a POP, that's good enough.

  • Would anyone like to make a comment about the impact that this will have on imaging radar (ie RADARSAT at C-HH). Or conversely the imapct that overpass of the satellite will have on wireless comms?
  • Some of the 5 Ghz spectrum was allocated for a second set of ILS (instrument landing systems) frequencies and its looking like it will never get used for that. That opens up at least 100 mhz in the band in most countries.

    Second is the 4W ERIP limit has its advantages but it means you can't use low cost microwave to do backhaul. The US FCC rules allow much more than 4W ERIP with a very narrow beam. Aparently this won't be allowed the UK so whats the point of cheap last mile if the lines to the base stati

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