The Italian government has announced that it is opening the 3.5 GHz spectrum for WiMAX and will offer licenses for the band sometime in the first half of 2007, according to Reuters. To make space for the new technology, Italy has reassigned 3.4-3.6GHz from military use.
The move is expected to pull in a 100-200 million euros, far from Europe’s past auctions for 3G cellular technology or recent US auctions of cellular spectrum. It will be up to Italy’s telecoms regulator AGCom to decide by February how it intends to distribute the frequencies. Tiscali and broadband provider Fastweb have successfully tested WiMAX technology.
Companies like Clearwire and Sprint are using the 2.5-2.7 GHz band to deploy WiMAX in the US. Clearwire has international aspirations with Intel and Motorola major investors.
The WiMAX Forum’s Spectrum and Regulatory Database has been completed. The database represents a worldwide effort by the forum to compile frequency availability, spectrum licensing, and regulatory information for the 2.3, 2.5, 3.5, 3.7 and 5.8 GHz frequency bands. It was developed in collaboration with AT4 wireless (formerly CETECOM Spain).
While the 3.5 GHz band is the most popular world-wide, the FCC is still protecting 3.5 GHz for attack radar in the United States.
Attack what? The 3.5 GHz band is the “WiMAX band” in the rest of the world. Besides, UAV links at 3.5 GHz may save more lives.
The FCC did open a small license-free band at 3.65 GHz. However, the contention protocol defined for the band (designed to mitigate interference) could be incompatible with the standard WiMAX protocol.
Perhaps U.S. policy makers will come around in 2007 and embrace the inevitable.
Cellular operators like Verizon and Cingular need cost-effective backhaul for their cell sites which now need more capacity thanks to HSDPA and EVDO data services. WiMAX at 3.5 GHz may be the most cost/effective solution.
Watch the NTIA and FCC get religion for a “competitive environment” in 2007.
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Not only does the military have radars in the band (with peak powers of MegaWatts) other countries have some of these US radars also, like Japan, Norway, demark, etc. There are also VSAT terminals in this band (satellites for you Dish TV nuts) which can not get along with WiMAX in the 3.5GHz band. Call them Fixed Satellite Service (FSS) for short. There are millions of users! Who was there first? FSS by about 40 years. WiMAX belongs down in the 2.3, 2.5GHz band anyways, as this is far far better for longer range. U.S. FCC & NTIA have it right! Keep them out of the 3.5GHz band. Besides, in the next couple years, WiMAX will have 700MHz to deploy, and that has 10’s of miles coverage per cell site, NLOS too.
Left by kcarrigan on April 16th, 2007