Switzerland Offering 3 BWA Licenses

Switzerland's telecoms regulator, Ofcom has announced plans for an auction of three BWA licences. The Federal Office of Communications (Ofcom) will be holding the auction on behalf of ComCom. In principle, any company can apply for the licences which are being auctioned off, either on its own or as part of a consortium, if it meets the general licensing conditions. However, each candidate may acquire only one licence. The same also applies to groups of companies. Companies or groups of companies which already have a licence in the corresponding frequency band are therefore excluded. Currently this applies to Priority Wireless, which is - as Cablecom - part of the Liberty Group and which acquired a Wireless Local Loop (WLL) licence in this range of frequencies in March 2000.

There is a different allocation of frequencies for the new licences in the 3.41-3.6 GHz frequency range: two licences will each have a bandwidth of 2 x 21 MHz and the third licence will have 2 x 17.5 MHz. This will enable all licensees to offer high-quality services nationwide. It will also be possible to offer nomadic services in addition to fixed point-to-multipoint services. "Nomadic" means the use of a terminal at any location, subject to the condition that the location of the terminal is not changed during use. In the medium term it is also planned to allow mobile services.

The licences will be awarded under a so-called "sealed bid" auction. In this variant each bidder submits a single, independent, sealed bid. The bids of the other bidders cannot be consulted. The award goes to the highest bidder.

The licences will be valid until 31 December 2016. The licences include minimum conditions concerning the construction of networks. Licensees are obliged to commence commercial operation by 31 December 2007 at the latest and to operate at least 120 transmission/reception units by the end of 2009.

BWA is defined as broadband wireless access to a telecommunications network, for example for internet access. BWA is a generic term for various wireless access technologies such as WLL (Wireless Local Loop), FBWA (Fixed Broadband Wireless Access) or MBWA (Mobile Broadband Wireless Access). WiMAX (WiMAX Forum) and HiperMAN (ETSI) are the "brands" corresponding to these technologies."

Posted to the site on 29th November 2005