Hi
When i read the regulations on the ofcom web site it now says the band 870-874.4MHz can now be used in Europe, allowing 500mw of power. Can someone just confirm this is okay for lora/Lorawan?
Cheers
Scott
Paging all the UK lawyers lurking around on the forum - this is your time to shine!
Apart from the inadvisability of asking for legal advice from a bunch of tech heads, where will you be sourcing these radios from - both for the device & for the gateway - and how will it be setup on the console?
I am not asking for legal advice, just if anyone knows if this is correct. If so we plan to design some hardware around this frequency.
To me ‘short range devices’ and Lora are not compatible, however interpretations might differ. Also, LoRaWAN already causes a fair amount of interference due to the modulation and the distance signals travel, do you really want to increase transmission power to make sure people over 200 miles away will be receiving your transmissions? You don’t want to limit yourself to a 20 miles range of saturating the airwaves??
You are free to modulate as you see fit, that bit is entirely up to you.
You will need radio hardware with a suitable PA to make use of the 500mW you have your eyes on.
And you will need an LNS that can support the frequencies you choose.
And you will need to update the gateway software to use those frequencies.
And you’ll need a concentrator card with a suitable PA for output so those far away devices can hear downlinks.
But apart from those, viniculture, aqueducts and public health, what have the standards ever done for us?
And if anyone has any objections and you find yourself being asked hard questions, we are at least clear that pointing at this forum is not going to be a defence.
For sure.
And since there is a requirement to mitigate interferance then presumably that implies being able to reduce power to only that required.
This is a significant issue for a lot of the high power LoRa modules out there.
The PA to increase power, from 100mW, is often a class C device so the power output is often not controllable, its an all or nothing thing.
And dont forget the requirement for the hardware to comply with CE etc.
Also be wary as we have Cellular operators in the 800/900Mhz bands over here (e.g. B20?) which you need to avoid interfering with and interference from. Mitigation at the slightly lower 868Mhz band is more well established.These, even if available & useable, would be none standard wrt L-A standard EU frequency plans and the standard TTN deployments and as outside TTN they would also then become outside scope for the Forum!
From my earlier industry engagements with the UK Smart Meter (oxymoron if ever there was one!) programme (spits to side!) I believe this frequency band liberation was in part driven by the perceived need/option for HAN use - truely short range as part of the Home Area Network implementations to be used by Meter to Domestic display devices IIRC. As a general guide having higher powers generally though ‘nice to have’ for a given user/use case but the fact is that RF noise is additive and you should always be thinking what is the minimum I can reliably be using/getting away with for my use case so as to be a good social citizen and RF spectrum user…just a thought! 
Longer term and potentially more interesting is the scope for potential use (currently still consulting I believe) of parts of the ‘915Mhz’ spectrum in UK (and EU), though this would likely lead to the bifurcation and confusion seen in other LoRaWAN dual use territories such as AU 
(One of the reasons 433Mhz hasnt taken off/is discouraged!)
Remember also from a system economics perspective you would be moving away from mass produced lower cost well characterised devices to ones where you may have to start evaluating and measuring performance for your own use (I can see volumes potentially limited - at least in early years) - for 870-874.4.Mhz, and therefore potentially not a viable target market for the broad base of device and gateway manufacturers, though my own look see at the market and various vendor discussions (admittedly a few years back now) suggested many could be good to go in the 870-~ 872Mhz range…
…just my 2 penneth worth - IANAL! 