ACMA media release 40/2013 – 6 June
As part of implementing its strategic approach to the future needs of Australia’s public safety agencies (PSA), the Australian Communications and Media Authority has developed a class licence that provides nationwide access to 50 MHz of spectrum in the 4.9 GHz band. This spectrum is capable of extremely high capacity, short range, instantly deployable data and video communications.
‘PSA rely heavily on a broad range of radiocommunications services to carry out their responsibilities,’ said ACMA Chairman, Chris Chapman. ‘The 4.9 GHz band is part of a multi-layered approach that the ACMA has undertaken to meet the wide-ranging spectrum needs of PSA. The spectrum being provided to PSA comes from a number of frequency bands and offers a level of flexibility and interoperability that is frankly unprecedented. This will provide the basis for a state of the art, public safety communications ecosystem intended to serve the voice, data and video communications needs of public safety agencies well into the future.
‘This class licence will support our PSA in deploying a wide range of applications,’ Mr Chapman added. ‘The expected use of the band will be primarily to support mobile and point-to-multipoint applications, especially in situations where there is a localised spike in data demand such as around an incident site. The flexibility of the class licence will also provide for the deployment of temporary fixed links, such as video surveillance backhaul and data linking from airborne platforms.’
The 4.9 GHz band is also identified internationally for public protection and disaster relief applications. This means that there is an established, international market for standardised, public safety-grade equipment for this band (including WiFi, WiMAX and video transfer systems).
Being subject to a class licence regime means that none of these applications will need individual licences. Class licensing is appropriate for this band, given that the short propagation distances at these frequencies provide for a high degree of frequency reuse with a low risk of causing mutual interference. This allows for ad-hoc, unplanned deployments, which is important to the work of PSA, and adds a significant degree of flexibility during emergency responses and disaster recovery activities.
