5.2 Licensing procedures adopted in other countries for this spectrum

Australia, USA and UK authorities all provide a licensing regime where parties wishing to establish and operate stations within the 70-90 GHz frequency bands receive a non exclusive nationwide licence (or authority).

The holders of a non exclusive nationwide licence are required to enter the basic individual station data into the centralized data base of the administration concerned. An annually renewable licence is then issued by the respective spectrum management authority after a fee is paid. The data consists mainly of the location of both ends of the link with the minimum of technical details.

The purpose of this somewhat different approach of ‘self coordination’ adopted in Australia and the UK is to minimise the transaction costs by making use of the inherent high degree of frequency reuse of equipment operating at these frequencies.

In general interference can only be caused to those stations within sight and pointing in the direction of the new transmitter/receiver.

To carry out the necessary interference evaluation studies, a holder of a non- exclusive nationwide licence needs access to the site data of the other licensed stations in these bands. Without access to such records, this process would not be possible and the number of stations that could use this band before interference occurred would be much less.

On the other hand, the issue of individual licensing has costs attached to it. The current annual fee levied for fixed links in New Zealand is $200 per station per year. In the UK the cost for stations operating in these bands is £50 (currently around NZ$131) per station per year while in Australia the cost is A$ 187 (currently around NZ$236) per pair of stations per year.

Whilst taking into account the importance of access to the 70-90 GHz band for fixed-links in support of the national broadband delivery objective and protecting existing stations consideration has been to how licensing could be further simplified and reducing cost to both the Government and to the end user.

As indicated earlier, the concept of self-coordination as applied overseas also prevents licensing these stations by a General User Licence issued under Part 9 of the Radiocommunications Regulations. This is because site data from the existing stations would not be captured.

Currently there are no other applications using these bands in New Zealand, although there could be in the future. Radio Astronomy, for example, could be introduced and this would require protection against interference. Coordination with existing stations would not be possible without detailed location records. This supports the case for the issue of individual station licences where such data is recorded in the Register of Radio Frequencies, or an option where such data is held by the licensee and subject to audit.

The MED currently regulates the OX band (2.700-2.900 GHz) using self-coordination between licensees. The OX band is used extensively for itinerant microwave linking in support of outside broadcasting purposes as well as other temporary linking requirements. OX band licensees know who the other licensees are and can quickly and effectively coordinate band usage amongst themselves. This self-coordination concept has been operationally proven as an effective form of shared spectrum access.

If a process to that used within the OX band could be developed for the 70-90 GHz bands, then the requirement for individual licensing of each station may be able to be avoided, thus reducing the costs to both the MED and the end user.

One possible approach would be for the MED to follow the UK and Australian example of issuing non-exclusive nationwide licenses to the interested parties. The MED would only record the names and contact details of the licensees, and these would be publicly available on the MED website via the SMART interface to the Register of Radio Frequencies.

As inter-station coordination will be required if interference is to be avoided, a condition of the proposed non-exclusive nationwide licenses would be that each licensee keeps records of the stations that they have installed and that this data be made available when requested by another holder of a similar non-exclusive nationwide licensee. The obligation to keep records and make information available would lie with the non-exclusive nationwide licensee rather than the MED. This would remove the need for the MED to keep such records and licence individual stations.

Non-exclusive nationwide licenses would contain a condition to the effect that: ‘the holder of this licence shall maintain records as detailed in an attached schedule and these records shall be made available at no charge on request by other holders of non exclusive nationwide licences for the bands 71-76 GHz and 81-86 GHz, as well as to the MED’.

In order to ensure that the MED records of the holders of non-exclusive nationwide licenses and their contact details is current, the non-exclusive nationwide license would be annually renewable and subject to a nominal administrative fee to cover administration costs. This minimises the direct compliance costs of access whilst ensures that the necessary licensee contact details for inter-station and inter-service coordination are maintained should they be needed due to the development of future services.

The UK and Australia have adopted a ‘first in time’ rule for the mitigation of interference and dispute resolution. This means that when resolving interference issues radio links licensed first have priority over those licensed later. This concept is enshrined in Part 12 of the Radiocommunications Act 1989, and necessitates the recording of a date from which licence priority can be measured