Mobile broadband power boost in the UK

[4me2]

Just doing a bit of surfing and found this today:


Mobile broadband power boost in the UK


08 Sep 2010 | 09.47 Europe/London


Ofcom has today announced it is allowing the UK’s mobile phone operators to turn up the power on their 3G base stations.

This has the potential to improve call quality as well as improve mobile broadband performance, particularly indoors – 3G services in the UK operate at a high frequency (compared to voice) and so can suffer from poor indoor performance.

Ofcom is allowing the country’s mobile broadband operators to turn up the power on base station from 62 to to 65 dBm e.i.r.p. (or Equivalent Isotripically Radiated Power) per carrier. It reveals that it had considered raising the maximum bar higher but the operators were content with a rise to 65 dBm.

Permission was given once the Health Protection Agency concluded that the increase in power would not pose a health risk because emissions will still be below minimum levels.

Ofcom points out that this increase in power is only for 3G and not for the country’s two main voice spectrum bands which, it further comments, will not notice any negative impact on performance due to the power increase in the mobile broadband spectrum.

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/ne...-uk-10831.html

[4me2]

Ofcom gives 3G upgrade thumbs-up

But it'll kill all the bees and then we'll all die!


By Bill Ray • Get more from this author
Posted in Mobile, 8th September 2010 13:50 GMT


Ofcom has decided to let 3G networks up their broadcast power, but only by half of what it had proposed: for the sake of 3 rather than the bees.
The death of all bees was predicted by one of the more colourful respondents to Ofcom's consultation on the matter; others were concerned about signal leakage and more general health. But it was 3's fear of being swamped that convinced Ofcom to cap the signal strength at 65dBm, rather than the 68dBm cap the regulator had proposed.


Not that the industry ever asked for a 6dB increase. Vodafone's original pitch, quickly backed by the other operators, only asked that the current cap of 62dBm be upped by 3dB.
Ofcom itself proposed twice that figure to prevent operators asking for another increase in a year or two - not an insignificant change when one remembers that dB is a logarithmic scale.
3 took exception to the doubling, so Ofcom has decided that 65dBm is probably enough to be going on with.
Wireless camera users in the neighbouring frequencies complained that any increase would leak into their patch - in response to which Ofcom points out that the limits on such leakage remain the same, operators will only be able to up the power if they can control the signal too.
Other respondents cited unspecified health concerns, though even at the highest proposed power the public's exposure is well within that considered safe by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection.
Leaving us with the risk to the bees: which, we were told by one Andrew Goldsworthy (BSc PhD), would lead to famine and mass starvation along with outbreaks of scurvy causing us to "literally begin to fall apart".
Outside Ofcom's immediate remit one might imagine... sure enough we're told by the regulator that it has "forwarded the relevant responses to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs". ®


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/08/ofcom_3g_power/

[Over Carl]

Sod's law. I've just taken delivery of an assortment of 3g dongles and Poynting antenna to try and somehow get a usable signal for our sites running off 3g dongles. I bet by the time I get round to testing, they'll have turned the power up making my experiments pointless.

[4me2]

Sod's law. I've just taken delivery of an assortment of 3g dongles and Poynting antenna to try and somehow get a usable signal for our sites running off 3g dongles. I bet by the time I get round to testing, they'll have turned the power up making my experiments pointless.

that seems to be the missing bit of info we'd all like to hear, namely, When is this power boost going to happen ?

[evilsatan]

Perhaps I will finally get a stable signal in my house!