Tuesday, July 25, 2007 |
News
NTC assigns frequencies for broadband
The government is encouraging new wireless services players to enter the market by allocating additional frequencies for broadband.
The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) has reallocated the band 410-430 MHz on the radio spectrum for broadband wireless access, effective end-August.
The band can accommodate four broadband companies, Lucio M. Espinosa, Jr., NTC chief of staff said.
The affected users, which are companies who use the frequency for radio communications, have been moved to the 406.10-410.00 MHz and 440.00-450.00 MHz bands.
The new band assignment is in addition to the frequency bands 450-470 MHz and the higher frequency bands starting from 1.9 GHz to 10.15 GHz originally allocated to broadband.
"Allocating more frequency bands will encourage new players to enter the market. This is playing with the economies of scale. This will mean more opportunities, larger market. Players in Metro Manila can and well, they will have to go out [of the area eventually]. With larger markets, the costs per subscriber will go down," NTC common carriers authorization division chief Edgardo V. Cabarios told BusinessWorld Monday.
"This will push information and communication technologies (ICTs) growth and accelerate the bridging of the digital divide."
The government’s ICT program recognizes that wireless access technology is one of the solutions to the digital divide, he added. The digital divide is a global phenomenon; it is an economic, and partly social, gap which is used to describe the disparities in access to ICTs.
The NTC had earlier suspended the acceptance of applications within the bands 406-450 MHz and 470-512 MHz. The agency has yet to transfer the 470-512 MHz band pending the agreement of existing users.
Republic Act 7925 or the Public Telecommunications Policy Act says that radio spectrum allocation shall be subject to review every two years in order to keep pace with the developments in wireless technology.
All wireless communications like radio communications, radio broadcasting, and wireless broadband Internet have specific band allocations on the radio spectrum.
Broadband services providers see this as a positive move. New players will have "a broader range [of frequencies] to choose from," a top official of one of the leading wireless services company said.
Happy Communications, Inc., one of the newest players in the industry, said that the future of technology is in wireless.
"This confirms what we are focused on. This is the next level of communications, and we glad to be part of it," said chief marketing officer Marvin T. Cruz in a telephone interview.
Happy, which is still rolling out equipment for soft launch in Metro Manila next month, claims to be one of the first to offer 4G (fourth generation) communication services. 4G is a notch faster, and has greater information carrying capacity, than the current best available medium, 3G. Happy operates on the 10.5 GHz frequency.
The Computer Industry Almanac says the number of internet users in the
No comments:
Post a Comment