UK 5GHz spectrum allocation gets the thumbs up

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Jan 24, 2003

Synad has commended the Radio Communications Agency for its bold leadership position in driving international wireless LAN frequency allocation.

Fabless WLAN SoC company Synad has commended the Radio Communications Agency, the UK Government licensing authority for radio spectrum, for its bold leadership position in driving international wireless local area networking (WLAN) frequency allocation.

The lack of consistent and available radio spectrum allocation for high speed WLANs outside the USA has caused confusion among users and impacted the adoption of WLAN technologies worldwide.

The Radio Communications Agency has taken a lead among European radio licensing authorities by driving proposals to release the 5GHz radio spectrum in the UK for high-speed IEEE802.11a wireless networks, already commonplace in the USA.

The move to deregulate part of the 5GHz spectrum in the UK from 12th February 2003 will enable public and private local area networks to be operated.

A similar deregulation of the radio spectrum at 2.4GHz was made in June 2002.

"The Radio Communications Agency has taken a bold leadership position by driving the international harmonisation of high-speed WLAN.

Synad hopes this move will give other European radio licensing authorities similar confidence to release 5GHz spectrum", said Mike Baker, CEO.

"This move will drive the uptake of WLAN by removing confusion for users and drives an international market for IEEE 802.11a products", added Baker.

IEEE802.11a, operating in the 5GHz spectrum, enables computer users to connect to wireless networks at up to 54Mbit/s, almost five times faster than the established IEEE802.11b, operating in the 2.4GHz spectrum.

This enables multimedia content such as streaming audio and video to be transferred between wireless PC users.

The increased channels available in the 5GHz spectrum also offers public access providers the capacity necessary to service higher-user-density hot-spot areas such as airports or hotels.

Synad has developed Mercury5G, a dual-band WLAN solution which provides roaming and connectivity across the various IEEE 802.11 standards, including 802.11a, 802.11b and the draft 802.11g.