MT FESTERS is not, as you might have thought, an elevated stone protuberance in the world of the Munsters. It is simply an anagram of the acronyms ERMES and TFTS.

• ERMES was a European Paging system. In the early 1990s, at a time when paging was taking off, the European Union issued a directive (90/544/EEC) which forced all EU Member States to set aside the frequency range 169.4 - 169.8 MHz for paging services. Ultimately text messaging using SMS came along at the same time and made paging obsolete before any EU-wide services were introduced. Fifteen years later, in 2005 the directive was repealed.
• TFTS was the terrestrial flight telecommunications service. The European Radiocommunications Committee set aside 1670 - 1675 and and 1800 - 1805 MHz for TFTS in 1992 (ERC Decision (92)01). TFTS was meant to be a network of ground based transmitters which would provide voice and basic data connectivity to aircraft. This decision was withdrawn ten years later in 2002 when no networks whatsoever had been rolled-out and satellite communication for aircraft had become easier and far less expensive.

In both cases, spectrum was set aside for technologies which addressed specific market sectors, but where, by the time the process of identifying and making spectrum available had been completed, things had moved on and the technologies were no longer relevant or economically viable. The spectrum that had been assigned for these purpose was left vacant for many years when it could have been put to better use. It was because of TFTS, for example, that the 1800 MHz mobile band begins at 1805 MHz when it could have been 5 MHz wider and started at 1800 MHz.

Arguably the same thing is now happening with V2X technologies. V2X (Vehicle to Everything, sometimes also known as ITS, intelligent transport systems) represents a number of different solutions for connection to, and between, road vehicles to enhance road safety and improve driverless driving. Many countries around the world (including the USA, Japan and Europe) set aside 75 MHz of spectrum from 5850 - 5925 MHz for this purpose (as per ITU Recommendation M.2121). However in 2020, the FCC reduced the amount of spectrum available from the original 75 MHz, to just 30 MHz citing the availablity of other technologies such as radar, lidar and video cameras as delivering many of the safety-related capabilities that V2X was intended to provide. Japan has recently done likewise.

In Europe, CEPT has recommended 5855 - 5925 MHz for V2X/ITS technologies (ECC/REC/(08)01), and harmoinsed the use of the frequency range 5875 - 5925 MHz whereas the European Commission has harmonised only the frequency range 5875 - 5905 MHz (Commission Decision 2008/671/EC). Even the specification for the technology (ETSI EN 302 571) hedges its bets on which piece of spectrum will or could be used for this technology.

Notwithstanding all this, and the fact that the spectrum has been available for 15 years, there has been little to no take-up of the technology. The C-Roads initiative shows (on the 'implemented services' page) the extent of coverage of V2X equipped roads. With the exception of one or two highways, most deployments are city based experiments. The fact that the technology is yet to become standard in new vehicles is leading to classic 'chicken and egg' situation where manufacturers are reluctant to put the technology in cars because there is nothing for them to connect to, and highways agencies are reluctant to install any roadside infrastructure as vehicles are not equipped with it. Furthermore, there is confusion about the business model for the roadside equipment. Is this a safety responsibility of the road authorities, or could it be a commercial provider offering advanced weather and traffic reports who builds it out?



Alongside this confusion, 5G mobile technology is slowly being rolled-out and has the capability to provide the kind of connectivity between vehicles and the roadside that V2X/ITS promises (and the business model is clear). Equally, in-car radars now have the ability to communicate with neighbouring vehicles to provide information on when the driver is applying the breaks, for example. The case for V2X/ITS is therefore rather nebulous and it seems ever more likely that the spectrum set-aside for that purpose will fester for a few more years before pressure mounts and it is decided that V2X, like ERMES and TFTS has evaporated into nothingness.

What the spectrum could then be used for is a question for another day, however one option may be CBTC (communication based train control) which often uses unlicensed 2.4 and 5.8 GHz frequencies and could do with a 'safer' home given it is used to control the movement of (mostly metro) trains. China is considering the possible use of the frequency range 1785 - 1805 MHz for CBTC which, if you've been following this article, you will realise includes some of the original TFTS spectrum. And thus the circle is squared.

Conduct a web-search for topics relating to 5G and on many occasions the answers which get returned are nothing to do with the next generation of mobile services, but relate to 5 GHz, which is one of the frequency bands used for WiFi (as well as several other technologies). It seems that both terms being of a wireless nature, those clever search engines are yet to be able to fully distinguish between them.

But there is more... If that isn't confusing enough, there's also a technology known as G5 which is designed to perform the job of allowing vehicles to communicate with each other, known as vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications, and with infrastructure (such as traffic lights) known as V2I. And to really throw the cat amongst the pigeons, the frequency band used for G5 is 5 GHz (5850 - 5929 MHz). Got that?

So, just to be really clear and helpful in exactly the way that Wireless Waffle always isn't, here are some bullet points which don't make everything far more translucent:

• 5G is the term used for the next generation of mobile technologies which will follow after 4G (LTE). The technology involved is also known as New Radio (NR).
• 5 GHz is a range of radio frequencies often considered as being 5150 - 5925 MHz, which are used by a wide variety of applications including WiFi, 4G (including LTE-U, LTE-LAA and MulteFire) and G5.
• G5 is a vehicle communication technology designed to enable Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) such as autonomous vehicles.

And now you know. So if Mr Google comes a-calling to this here web-page, hopefully he will be enlightened and future search results will no longer confuse these very different technologies!

Back in December of 2016, the UK Government's National Infrastructure Commission published its 'Connected Future' report. It recognised that:

government must take responsibility to secure our digital future ... Government must ensure we have the infrastructure in place to deliver 5G

Amongst the various proposals in the report, many are based on the recognition that 5G will require access to orders of magnitudes more base station sites than are currently deployed for 4G.

This makes a lot of sense. Local planning restrictions already hamper the roll-out of mobile services, not just because local councils think that cell sites are ugly, or even that they damage the environment or health, but the application procedure to get permission to install a site varies wildly from one council to another. Simplifying, harmonising and streamlining the process is essential if the UK, or indeed any country, is going to benefit from whatever it is that 5G is going to offer.

It seems rather short-sighted then, that the Welsh Government is still pondering a change to what are know as Permitted Development Rights (PDR) to allow mobile operators to build masts with a height of 25 metres (82 feet) with reduced planning requirements. At present, in Wales, operators are only allowed to extend the height of their masts to 15 metres (50 feet), whereas in the rest of the UK, the limit is 25 metres.

Wireless Waffle has previously discussed the relative merits of increasing transmitter power compared to increasing antenna height and demonstrated the importance of antenna height. In an area such as Wales where the difficulty in providing coverage is exacerbated by the hilly terrain, and where a large number of mobile 'not-spots' exist, antenna height is of even greater importance. The reluctance to increase the permitted tower height comes in stark contrast to a previous move by the Welsh Government to invest £150 million in trying to provide coverage in these not-spots.



There is no doubt a fear that higher masts will make the countryside look ugly or cluttered, but the counter-balancing effect is that taller masts, means fewer masts. Imagine how many TV transmitter towers there would need to be if their height was limited to 15 metres. If Wales is to rise out of the valleys in terms of mobile coverage, the Welsh Government needs to act quickly, i.e. before 5G comes along, to ensure that the existing not-spot problems are not further heightened (see what we did there?)

As they say in Wales: "Nid yw tegell llawn caws yn cael ei ddefnyddio i ffôn symudol gyda chalon wedi'i dorri."

No sooner has 2019 begun than the 5G hype wagon has been set off over the dusty plains being drawn by a load of dog-eared donkeys with lazy, do-nothing yokels riding on the back of it. This week it is the turn of US mobile giant AT&T who have somehow convinced Apple to update the firmware in their iPhone to show '5G' (or more precisely '5G E') as the network to which it is connected.



But the network isn't 5G, it's 4G. AT&T don't have a 5G mobile network.

A while ago, Wireless Waffle attempted to demystify the various network type indicators that are shown on mobile phones. If this can be fudged by mobile operators or mobile handset manufacturers, then expect to see lots of new '5G' services sprouting up any time soon. What will the operators then do when they actually launch 5G? 6G here we come...!