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The year 2005 started on a good note for WLAN users in India. Not only did the government exempt the indoor use of low power wireless equipment in the frequency band 5 GHz from licensing requirement, it also did away with the need of license for outdoor use of the 2.4 GHz band.

Indoor or Outdoor: No License for 2.4 GHz
The government has de-licensed the 2.4 GHz spectrum (specifically, the 2.40-2.48 GHz band) and allowed the indoor, or in campus, as well as outdoor use of 802.11b and g within the band. A notification issued said that "no licence shall be required by any person to establish, maintain, work, possess or deal in any wireless equipment, on non-interference, non-protection and shared (non-exclusive) basis, in the frequency band 2.4 GHz to 2.4835 GHz". However, users must adhere to certain specifications (see table 1).

De-licensing of 2.4GHz band for outdoor usage is significant in the context of new advancements in Wi-Fi technology, especially the dual mode handsets. Many vendors are working on mobile handsets that would work on both 802.11-based networks and GSM/GPRS networks. What these handsets would basically do is allow users to offload cellular voice and data traffic onto their office WLANs or hot spots.

Deploying 802.11a Indoors: No License Required
In January 2005, the government exempted the "Indoor use of low power wireless equipment in the frequency band 5 GHz" from licensing requirements. The notification issued by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (Wireless Planning and Coordination Wing) stated that no licence shall be required by any person to establish, maintain, work, possess or deal in any wireless equipment for the purpose of low power Wireless Access System, including Radio Local Area Networks, in the frequency band 5.150 to 5.350 GHz and 5.725 to 5.875 GHz.

This means that organizations can deploy 802.11a based WLAN systems that support a throughput up to 54 Mbps. Given the availability of 200MHz of available spectrum within the lower part of the 5GHz U-NII band, 12 such systems can operate simultaneously within a 50-meter circle with minimal degradation, for an aggregate speed of 648Mbps. In other words, 802.11a systems support more users and have a significant advantage in terms of network scalability.

Ravi Shekhar Pandey