There is no need to worry about licencing if you are operating devices in the 2.4GHz frequency or 5GHz frequency, these bands are free to use and there’s no need to buy a licence.

For our outdoor point-to-point solutions that use the 60GHz frequency, you may have to purchase a licence, depending on the EIRP and how powerful the antenna transmit power is.

The majority of 60GHz devices sold by Mear Technology Ltd have an EIRP between 40-55dBm, and require an EHF Licence to operate. Unlike “Lite Licences”, a single EHF licence covers unlimited installations within the selected frequency range (in this case, 57-71GHz).

What is this licence called?

This licence is the Spectrum Access: EHF licence and pertains to 32GHz of radio spectrum across four bands:

• 57-71 GHz
• 116-122 GHz
• 174.8-182 GHz
• 185-190 GHz

When applying, you select your preferred band. You may not operate in any of the other available bands unless you obtain separate licences for them.

Which devices need a licence?

Any outdoor devices with an output power (called EIRP) between 40dBm and 55dBm, or with antennas with a 27dBm maximum transmit output, must have a licence from Ofcom.

Devices that are installed and operated indoors or with low-power antennas do not need to be licensed.

Where can I find these dBm specifications?

The transmit output dBm can usually be found in the product specifications. For the EIRP, you will need to do a quick calculation: simply add together the transmission output dBm and the gain (and if the product has an external antenna, subtract the cable loss to get your final result. Alternatively, here is an online EIRP calculator.

Calculation Example
EIRP = Transmission output dBm + Gain

If a transmitter has an input power level of 12 dBm and is connected to an antenna with a 10 dBi gain using a cable with a 4 dB loss, then the EIRP of the system is 18 dBm.

EIRP = Tx Power + Tx Antenna – Tx Cable

EIRP = 12 dBm + 10 dBi – 4 dB

EIRP = 18 dDm

Where does this licence cover?

Across the whole UK, including the Channel Islands, Isle of Man, and UK territorial seas, are covered by the licence. The licence will permit you to operate any number of devices in your selected band, anywhere in the UK.

How much does the licence cost

The fee for this licence is £75 payable every 5 years, and includes unlimited devices and locations, so no extra fee is required if you want to install additional devices once you have your licence.
(correct at the time of publishing see Ofcom for current costs)

The license is the requirement of the client where the equipment is installed and not the installer. Renewal is also the responsibility of the client.

Where can I find out more information?

For more details about licence fees, the application process and licence terms and conditions, please visit Ofcom’s own website here.

A statement on Ofcom’s decision for a licence-exempt approach for Fixed Wireless Systems in the 60 GHz Band https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/40516/statement.pdf

For in-depth details, see Ofcom’s Licensing guidance document here.

For information about licence exemptions for short-range devices, see Ofcom’s guide here.

For information on Ofcom approach and enforcement see the Ofcom website here

The post When do I need Ofcom Licensing for 60GHz EHF appeared first on Mear Technology.

6G 50 Times Faster Than 5G

For reference, 6G is likely to be around 50 times faster than 5G, which itself is around 20 times faster than 4G. Whilst this is very approximate, this could mean that a film that may take (say) 7 minutes to download via contemporary 4G would take 6 seconds with 5G (the newest standard currently being rolled out) and circa 0.12 seconds with 6G.

Highest Ever Reported

Working in collaboration with Southeast University, Pengcheng Laboratory, Fudan University, and China Mobile, the lab claims to have achieved a single-wavelength net rate of 103.125 Gbps and a dual-wavelength terahertz wireless transmission (in a lab environment) with a net rate of 206.25 Gbits/sec. As well as being the highest transmission terahertz real-time wireless communication ever publicly reported, this has the potential to increase the speed of 5G transfers, which are already 20x faster than previous standards

What Does This Mean?

Purple Mountain has said that this terahertz frequency band (300GHz~3THz), is considered to be the foundation of 6G mobile communications. The implications of the lab achieving a speed/wireless transmission rate this high could be:

– The replacement of the existing mobile optical fibre network, reducing the amount of data centre cables and power costs, and integrating with the existing optical fibre network to bring ultra-high speed outdoor and indoor wireless access.

– Installation on satellites, drones, and airships to help boost wireless communication between satellite clusters, the sky, and the Earth, or between separate satellites.

6G

6G is expected to be around 50 times faster than 5G with faster data rates and lower latencies. Even though 5G wireless technology is still only just being rolled out in many countries, 6G is expected to be its successor. Huawei Technologies Co estimates that 6G will enter the market around 2030 but an agreement is still to be reached on the technical standards that could support 6G frequencies, signal modulations, and waveforms.

Others Testing 6G

Purple Mountain Laboratories is not the only one to be testing 6G and claiming breakthroughs. Back in August, for example, LG, in partnership with Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute in Germany, claimed to be the first company to successfully transmit data across 6G outdoors. Also, back in June, a Samsung prototype was reported to have demonstrated successful 6G data transmission on terahertz (THz)/6G frequencies.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

For UK businesses, it’s likely to be frustrating that 5G hasn’t been successfully rolled out yet and there’s already news of the development of its successor 6G and how businesses in other countries look set to be able to benefit from it. In global terms, it is of course good news that there have been breakthroughs in wireless technology that could, in several years, bring many advantages. Lack of agreement, however, on standards to support 6G frequencies or any kind of official road map for 6G are also challenges to businesses being able to start using and benefitting via 6G any time soon.

The post 6G Breakthrough, Fastest Real-Time Wireless Communication Speed Ever Recorded appeared first on Mear Technology.

Most Business Have Hybrid Working Plan

The research conducted by Vanson Bourne on behalf of Zen Internet showed that 93 per cent of businesses already have a hybrid working plan in place to enable employees to work remotely, and 89 per cent now have their tech operations hosted off-premise.

The Hybrid Effect

Post-COVID Hybrid working patterns using software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN) and cloud-based collaborative platforms have meant that there are much fewer people in the office and maintaining the same amount of on-premises tech infrastructure, such as data centres, is no longer needed by many companies. The research showed that the effects on the office hardware include:

– Only 11 per cent of planned tech operations are projected to be hosted on-premise, even though on-premise datacentres take up around 8 per cent of office floor space, and half of UK businesses’ technological infrastructure are currently reliant on on-premise systems.

– Employees only working 3 days per week in the office building means that only 55 per cent of office space and desks are expected to be in use over the next year.

Why Keep On-Premise Data Centres?

With half of the businesses surveyed by Zen admitting that data centres pose security and maintenance challenges, and with more than one-third citing a lack of in-house data centre maintenance skills and the fact they take up a lot of a physical space, there is an argument that with cloud-based hybrid working solutions, on-premise data centres may no longer be needed.

Although between one-third and one-half of the businesses surveyed could see a business case for moving data centres off-premise (e.g. better security and maintenance), their reason for not doing so yet is based on a belief that it would be expensive (77 per cent), and time-consuming (82 per cent).

Function Of The Office Is Changing

Hybrid working means that for many businesses, the office has become more of a place for colleagues to meet, collaborate, socialise, and learn, and the has become the ‘cultural epicentre’ of the business, whereas home is now the place where focused work tasks are carried out.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

With hybrid working and the important part played by the cloud and SD-WAN technology now becoming a widely accepted working pattern, and with many offices not likely to see the whole workforce in at any one time, it makes sense that businesses are now asking questions about whether they now need large parts of their in-house, on-premise infrastructure e.g., a data centre. Also, cloud-based alternatives may be more secure and easier to maintain, thereby making the off-premises move more attractive both practically and financially. Although some businesses still see expense and difficulty as barriers to making the move now, it’s important to recognise that a different, valuable use can be made of the office to support the new culture, and many businesses have already successfully made the move to off-premise tech infrastructure and that this could become a source of competitive advantage going forward in the new work environment.

The post Hybrid Working Results In Move Off-Premise For Tech Infrastructure appeared first on Mear Technology.

Print What?

Printing With Alexa allows the simple “Alexa, print….” followed by what the user requires to produce a printed document.  Amazon says that the kinds of things that can be printed this way include “shopping and to-do lists, games like mazes and Sudoku, graph paper, lined paper, and test pages.”

The list of different documents, many of which are related to family activities, appears to reflect the working and learning from home that has become the new norm for many people over the last 6 months, and possibly again in the future with second spikes or more lockdowns.

Connecting

Amazon says that the service will work with compatible printers that are connected to the same wireless network as your Alexa device (provided it is a compatible Echo device too). The service is activated when the user says “Alexa, discover my printer”, or navigates to the “Devices” screen in the Alexa App, selects “+”, selects “Add Device”, and chooses “Printer” as the device type. Amazon says that the service works with most IPP-enabled network-connected printers manufactured by HP, Brother, Canon, and Epson.

Ink or Toner Re-Orders

The service also enables automatic ordering ink or toner from Amazon at a 10 per cent discount, thereby acting as a kind of hands-free replenishment process and providing extra revenue for Amazon.

Brand Voice

Back in February, before the worldwide pandemic lockdowns and working-from-home hit, Amazon was more focused on features for the business market with Alexa as it offered a new ‘Brand Voice’ capability through AWS (Brand Polly) to companies which enabled them to create their own custom voice for Alexa to replace the default voice with one that reflected their “persona”, such as the voice of Colonel Sanders for KFC.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

The ‘Printing With Alexa’ service is another step in Amazon’s plan to tie Alexa (and Echo devices) more closely in with all aspects of the user’s life e.g. making phone calls, setting their appointments, alarms and reminders, and linking in with many other devices on their home network plus IoT devices.  This strategy may put Amazon’s digital assistant at the heart of the operation of modern home and will, as in this case with the printer cartridge re-ordering, tie in with Amazon’s retailing platforms, thereby providing increased revenue for Amazon and a monetising of Alexa.  This may even spread to the ordering of groceries.  For example, in July, Amazon announced that it was taking on the supermarkets and Ocado in the UK with free grocery deliveries from its Amazon Fresh service.

Even though the pandemic has dampened business-targeted announcements, Amazon is still planning to keep monetising Alexa in the business market too where there is huge potential for modifications and different targeted and customised versions of Alexa and digital assistants.  For example, in April last year, Amazon launched its Alexa for Business Blueprints, which is a platform that enables businesses to make their own Alexa-powered applications for their organisation and incorporate their own customised, private ‘skills’.

The post Voice-Control Your Printer appeared first on Mear Technology.

The post Case Study: The Edinburgh Grand – IT Support – BlackBX wifi – Ubiquiti Wifi – Office 365 appeared first on Mear Technology.

Now available from Mear Technology call us today.

#Nebula #NetworkManagement #CloudManagement #MerakiAlternative #RukusAlternative #AerohiveAlternative

The post Introducing Zyxel Nebula Cloud Control Center appeared first on Mear Technology.

How?

In a UK first, the pilot scheme, which is taking place in four locations in Norfolk, uses a directional antenna, with a detector that picks up radio waves emitted from a mobile phone handset. The system measures the signal strength and length of activation of the signal, and if a signal is detected of a duration and signal strength sufficient to activate the system, the detector triggers a warning sign at the roadside.

Driver or Passenger?

Although the technology is advanced, one thing it can’t do yet is to tell the difference between the phone signal from a driver or a passenger in a vehicle. It also doesn’t record any video footage.

The system has also been designed to know whether a phone is being used hands-free or via a vehicle’s Bluetooth system (and if Bluetooth is being used it will not trigger the warning sign).

Why?

The system is designed to improve safety on UK roads by acting as a reminder to drivers. Driving while using a handheld mobile phone has been illegal in the UK since December 2003. The results of an RAC survey last year, however, show that 31% of motorists said that they had used a handheld mobile phone while driving. This was an increase on the 8% of those recorded in a survey 2 years previously as still using a handheld mobile phone while driving.

Unaware of Tougher Laws

Another RAC poll found that almost two-thirds of drivers are unaware of the punishment for using mobile phones at the wheel, even though it has been more than 12 months since the introduction of much tougher laws.

The poll showed that only 36% of the 2,000 UK motorists questioned knew that offenders face six penalty points and a £200 fine, and 41% believed more visible law enforcement is needed.

Drivers who receive a ban for offences now have to retake both the theory and practical parts of their driving test to get back on the road.

Prosecution Risk

Under the current UK law, picking up your phone while driving, even if stopped in traffic or at lights, will get you at least six points. If drivers are involved in a collision e.g. as a result of using a handheld device, they could be prosecuted for driving without due care and attention, which carries even greater penalties. If someone is killed in such a collision, the driver could be prosecuted for causing death by dangerous driving.

New Distractions

Many of the newer communication platforms and devices that could cause distractions in the car have made the news in recent years, such as iPhones (and Facetime), and the new Apple watch.

For example, back in January 2017, a family in Texas sued Apple because they believed that a driver who was allegedly distracted by a FaceTime call on his iPhone while at the wheel was the reason for a road accident which resulted in the death of their five-year-old daughter.

Also, in Canada in June this year, an Apple smartwatch was classified by a court as being the same kind of distraction as a mobile phone as a student was handed a fine for being observed looking at her Apple watch while waiting at traffic lights.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Considering the results of the RAC surveys some 15 years after the ban on handheld mobile phone use while driving, and a year after the doubling of penalties for being caught, it is clear that using technology to provide a friendly reminder to drivers can’t do any harm, and may even contribute to road safety.

If you and your employees drive to and from work and as part of your work it is essential that a hands-free device is used for any calls, or that calls are only made or received when your vehicle is safely parked. Even checking texts is constitutes a distraction.

The results of not heeding the law on this matter are not just the terrible human consequences, but also the potential damage to your business through driving penalties and reputational damage from the local publicity.

The post New System Detects & Warns Of Mobile Phone Use in Cars appeared first on Mear Technology.

Lagging In Europe

This latest result means that, even though average speeds in the UK have risen in the past year and, at 18.5Mbps, are above the global average, the UK is now lagging behind 25 other European countries.

Although the UK’s ranking is now actually above 165 other countries, it is still in the bottom third of EU member states.

Top Speeds

Globally, Singapore tops the average broadband speed table with 60 Mbps. In Europe, the Scandinavian countries are top of the league with Sweden at 46Mbps, Denmark at 43.9Mbps, and Norway at 40.1Mbps.

To give some idea of the gulf between broadband speeds at the top and bottom of the table, the lowest average broadband speeds can be found in Yemen (0.3Mbps), East Timor (0.49Mbps), and Turkmenistan (0.56Mbps).

Why The UK Fall In The Rankings?

It is widely believed that the UK is starting to drop further behind many of its European neighbours in average broadband speeds because it has been too late in embracing a full-fibre solution – FTTP (fibre to the premises). Many critics have pointed to UK infrastructure provider Openreach shying away from FTTP because of the perceived costs and level of difficulty of large-scale rollouts.

At present, many UK homes and businesses, therefore, have to rely on the slower FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) alternative, which uses copper wires to carry broadband from street cabinets to homes.

Openreach

Back in November 2016, partly because of its slowness to move to super-fast broadband but mainly because of a perceived monopoly, BT-owned Openreach was ordered by Ofcom to become a legally separate entity.

Hope

As well as Openreach’s competitors such as Hyperoptic moving forward with plans to offer FTTP to 2 million urban premises by 2022, the UK government has also recently updated its plans to bring FTTC to the UK. For example, the UK government’s National Infrastructure Commission (Nic) is now pushing for FTTC to be deployed around the UK by 2033, and hopefully, to be available to 15 million homes by 2025.

At the end of last year, the UK government announced that six regions of the UK would host trials of full fibre broadband for businesses, schools and hospitals as part of a £200m scheme by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS). The regions are Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire, West Sussex, Coventry and Warwickshire, Bristol and Bath & North East Somerset, West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

This latest drop down the table of average broadband speeds is bad news, but not a surprise for UK businesses. Broadband is now an essential service for business, and businesses know from their own experience that broadband services in the UK can sometimes be slow, patchy, and often expensive. A recent survey by watchdog ‘Which?’, for example, revealed that more than half of UK customers across 12 providers, are having problems with their broadband service or price.

At the moment, better broadband services, particularly for businesses in rural locations, still seem a very long way off as the reality is that the UK ranks only 35th in the world for average broadband speeds, and we may only actually have 7% full fibre coverage by 2020, with full coverage unlikely for another 15 years. This could affect the competitiveness of UK companies compared to their European neighbours and other global competitors for a long time to come.

The post UK Slips To 35th Place In Global Broadband Speed Table appeared first on Mear Technology.

What’s Been The Problem?

There are estimated to be around 9 billion Wi-Fi devices in use in the world, but the current security protocol, WPA2, dates back to 2004. The rapidly changing security landscape has, therefore, left many Wi-Fi devices vulnerable to new methods of attack, fuelling the calls for the fast introduction of a new, more secure standard.

WPA2 Vulnerabilities

For example, WPA2 which is mandatory for Wi-Fi Certified devices, is known to be vulnerable to offline dictionary attacks to guess passwords. This is where an attacker can have as many attempts as they like at guessing Wi-Fi credentials without being on the same network. Offline attacks allow the perpetrator to either passively stand and capture an exchange, or even interact with a user once before finding-out the password. Using Wi-Fi on public networks with the current protocol has also left people vulnerable to ‘man-in-the-middle’ attacks or ‘traffic sniffing’.

One key contributor to the vulnerability of using Wi-Fi with the WPA2 standard is the home / business using obvious / simple passwords.

What’s So Good About The New Standard?

The new WPA3 standard has several advantages. These include:

• The fact that it has been designed for the security challenges of businesses, although it has two modes of operation: Personal and Enterprise.
• The equivalent of 192-bit cryptographic strength, thereby offering a higher level of security than WPA2.
• The addition of Easy Connect, which allows a user to add any device to a Wi-Fi network using a secondary device already on the network via a QR code. This makes the connection more secure and helps simplify IoT device protection.
• WPA3-Personal mode offers enhanced protection against offline dictionary attacks and password guessing attempts through the introduction of a feature called Simultaneous Authentication of Equals (SAE). Some commentators have suggested that it ‘saves users from themselves’ by offering improved security even if a user chooses a more simple password. It also offers ‘forward secrecy’ to protect communications even if a password has been compromised.

In Tandem For The Time Being

The current standard WPA2 will be run in tandem with the new WPA3 standard until the standard becomes more widely used.

Protection Against Passive Evesdropping

In June, the Wi-Fi Alliance also announced the rollout of the Wi-Fi Enhanced Open, a certification program. This provides protection for unauthenticated networks e.g. coffee shops, hotels and airports, and protects connections against passive eavesdropping without needing a password by providing each user with a unique individual encryption that secures traffic between their device and the Wi-Fi network.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Wi-Fi security and the security of a growing number of IoT devices has long been a source of worry to individuals and businesses, particularly as the nature and variety of attack methods have evolved while the current security standard is 14 years old.

The introduction of a new, up-to-date standard / protocol which offers greater security, has been designed with businesses in mind, offers more features, and protects the user from their own slack approach to security is very welcome. WPA3 will be particularly welcomed by those who use networks to send and receive very sensitive data, such as the public sector or financial industry.

The post New, Improved Wi-Fi Security Standard WPA3 Starts Rollout appeared first on Mear Technology.

Neural Network

The technology at the heart of the Crazyflie 2.0 Nano Quadcopter is the DroNet neural network. This is able to processes incoming images from a camera at 20 frames per second. From this, the nano-drone is able to work out how to steer, and calculate the probability of a collision, thereby giving it the ability to know when to stop.

Fully On-Board Computation

The fact that the drone needs no external sensing and computing because all computation is fully on-board thanks to the PULP (Parallel Ultra Low Power) platform, means that it is truly autonomous, and is, therefore, a real first in terms of how a small drone can be controlled.

The new autonomous version is an improvement on the first test version, which involved putting the DroNet neural network system in a larger commercial-off-the-shelf, Parrot Bebop 2.0 drone, and using radio contact with a laptop to control it.

Trained Using Images

Since AI requires training so that it can learn to become better at a task, the drone’s neural network was trained using thousands of images taken from bicycles and cars driving along different roads.

Only Horizontal Movement

One major drawback at the current time is that, because it was trained using images from a single plane, the drone can only move horizontally and cannot yet fly up or down.

Even Smaller

Technologies involved in making drones have evolved to such a degree that even a robot ‘fly’ has now been built.

As the successor to RoboBee, the so-called RoboFly it is so small (the size of a fly) that it can’t support the weight of a battery to power it. The power for flight is currently delivered by a laser being trained on an attached photovoltaic cell.

The tiny device has wings that are flapped by sending a series of pulses of power in rapid succession and then slowing the pulsing down as it gets near the top of the wave (with the whole process in reverse for the downward flap).

The RoboFly, developed by a team of researchers based in Australia, can only just take off and travel a very short distance at present. Future plans for RoboFly reportedly include improving the onboard telemetry so it can control itself, and making a steered laser that can follow the bug’s movements and continuously beam power in its direction.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Up until now, the main uses for drones have been specialist applications such as within the military, in construction (viewing and mapping sites), film and TV, leisure use, and even for delivery of parcels (Amazon tests). All of these involve the use of larger drones that are remotely controlled.

The ideas that a drone can be made in a miniature size, and / or can control itself using AI could open up many more new areas of opportunity for businesses and other organisations. Such drones could be used in confined spaces or in very specialised situations.

The idea of an AI drone has, however, led to some alarm being expressed by some commentators. Even though AI autonomy could help drones to e.g. to monitor environments, be used in spying, and develop swarm intelligence for military use, some have expressed worries that they could become better at delivering lethal payloads, and could pose other unforeseen security risks.

The post AI Drones: Smaller and Smarter appeared first on Mear Technology.