Find out what bandwidth they really need for the meter reading system. There are plenty of narrowband UHF and VHF channels they could get and they should be able to get speeds up to 9600 baud on those channels. This may mean they need to choose a different equipment vendor because of the radio units. I find most utility companies are being led by the sales pitches and being told what they should have rather than really know what they need for bandwidth and the number of times per day they should poll the devices. If they also understood how many fewer base stations they would need by using the lower frequencies and narrow band equipment the coverage areas are much larger. Two way radio systems for data can operate easily down to -116 dBm for the slow data rates. Compare that to probably not getting anything functioning reliably below -80 dBm in the 900 band and you can see why the footprint for each base station would be so large. Tree losses at those lower bands are so much less as well.
Thank You, Brian Webster <http://www.wirelessmapping.com> www.wirelessmapping.com www.Broadband-Mapping.com From: Af [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Sean Heskett Sent: Monday, April 25, 2016 4:06 PM To: [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: [AFMUG] Licensed spectrum for utility companies can anyone point me in the direction of what licensed spectrum is available and how to obtain the spectrum for electrical and water utility companies that want to do advanced metering. our local co-op is about to deploy a 900Mhz system and they stated that they couldn't get any licensed spectrum. Any and all advice is greatly appreciate! Thanks, Sean
