ACMA AND FREQUENCY COORDINATION AND ASSIGNMENT

In Australia, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) control and manage the end to end process of allocating Spectrum and issuing Radiocommunications Licences for legally operating radio Transmitting equipment. As part of this process, SAT are one of a few independent organisations with ACMA Accredited Persons (AP’s) who can offer turnkey frequency allocation assessment and facilitate an expedient and efficient process of licence allocation within this framework.

In broad terms radio equipment falls into 3 categories.

1.Apparatus Licensed systems.

This is where equipment needs to be coordinated with other users and similar equipment types within the same defined frequency band and geographical areas. This is to ensure that both operation of the proposed new equipment and any existing equipment is properly protected from interference from each of the systems. Without this careful process users would not be protected from interference and system reliability and integrity would be compromised.

SAT are qualified to do this work in the form of we have three current ACMA Accredited Persons with a combined experience of over 60 years.

The Accredited Person is able to check the coordination of new requirements a client may have against the real time ACMA master database. They perform the technical assignment checks and balances to minimise interference whilst optimising client performance targets or design requirements. An ACMA Frequency Assignment Certificate (FAC) can be issued when this is completed. The FAC is prerequisite to attaining the licence and being legally able to operate equipment in these bands.

Completing the licensing process

SAT will acknowledge receipt of your request and normally within a business day assess the feasibility of the requirement plus we will quote you for the ACMA costs and our cost to coordinate and expediently issue a Frequency Assignment Certificate (FAC)

One issued the FAC, the Clients will need to pay the associated fees to the ACMA to ratify the licence.

2.Spectrum Licensed systems.

This is broadly where blocks of Spectrum can be bought and sold at Auction for frequency bands and areas for specific usage (e.g. 4 G and 5G carrier networks are managed like this), this can give the user a greater degree of flexibility for self managing the block of spectrum and allotment and assignment in house to that organisation. There is still a requirement to comply with certain requirements, SAT can help with Spectrum Licences and associated Device Registrations.

Please complete the enquiry form below and we will help guide you through this process.

3.Class licenced systems (sometimes referred to as unlicensed* )

For lower power less critical systems, it is possible to use a common pool of spectrum allocated for use by a broad range of applications, the spectrum is available for all users as long as the devices used meet a broad range of emission criteria (and equipment needs to meet these criteria before they can be used in Australia). There is no policing of these bands beyond the rules of class licence which means ultimately services cannot be protected from each others users interference and sometimes congestion or noise floor raising can result in degraded performance for which there is no solution apart from finding another band. There is a place and opportunity for using this spectrum and SAT can help advise on this with regards to your requirements.

Please complete the enquiry form below and we will help guide you through this process.

*Note this is a non ACMA term