Redwood City, California, USA – Silver Spring Networks, Inc., a leading networking platform and solutions provider for smart energy networks, has expressed its support for the CEPT’s framework for members to rationalise spectrum use at 870-875.6 MHz within European countries.
Within the CEPT framework, 5.6 MHz of spectrum (870-875.6 MHz) has been allocated for use by systems such as ‘Metropolitan and Rural Area Networks’ (MRANS), also widely known as wireless mesh machine-to-machine networks. CEPT is the organisation that represents the national regulatory authorities (NRAs) of 48 European countries.
“We take for granted the everyday use of wireless WiFi and Bluetooth, but these technologies and their immense societal value came about because of the wisdom to make the 2.4 and 5.8 GHz bands license exempt (i.e., unlicensed)”, said James Pace, Managing Director of European Markets, Silver Spring Networks (pictured above). “Likewise, we believe the release of license exempt sub-GHz spectrum will unlock billions of Euros in value for the widespread deployment of many M2M solutions, whose business cases are often broken when licensed spectrum technologies are the only option.”
“This is an important step in rationalising cross-border spectrum use and helping further ensure the reliable and secure implementation of large-scale M2M networks across Europe”, Mr Pace continued. “We are currently deploying our technology in a number of European countries and we look forward to continuing to help our customers realise the benefits of increasingly advanced smart grid and smart city networks.”
The CEPT’s designation of additional license exempt spectrum for M2M is the first step in the release of spectrum for broad commercial use across Europe. With the framework now in place, individual CEPT member countries can now proceed to allocate spectrum for use in a variety of machine-to-machine, smart grid, and smart city wireless networks, among others. The market certainty provided by this decision and corresponding standards will help result in cost effective radio implementations of benefit to all European citizens.
