TAS New Radio-Communication Station Licensing Scheme Brings Annual Industry Savings of $1.9m

With effect from 1 January 1999, TAS will exempt low power equipment from licensing and implement a new network licensing scheme to replace the current individual licensing of radio-communication equipment. This scheme ...

Singapore, 28 November 1998 | For Immediate Release

With effect from 1 January 1999, TAS will exempt low power equipment from licensing and implement a new network licensing scheme to replace the current individual licensing of radio-communication equipment. This scheme, which is expected to save private and public radio communication services operators about $1.9 million a year, is another move by TAS to help bring down the cost of business operations in Singapore.

Exemption of Low Power Radio-Communication Equipment from Licensing

Currently, low power radio-communication equipment operating at TAS pre-assigned frequency bands with output power less than 100 milliwatts are exempted from licensing. With improved technology in frequency and power control, new low power radio-communication equipment is commonly manufactured with higher output power at 500 milliwatts. TAS has decided to relax the licensing of this category of equipment as technological advances have allowed for a more liberal licensing framework to prevent radio interference and abuse of the radio-communication equipment. Under the new scheme, licensing will be waived for equipment that is capped at the higher output power of 500 milliwatts. Equipment with power exceeding 500 milliwatts still needs to be licensed because of their higher potential to cause radio interference.

New Network Licensing Scheme

Currently all portable/mobile radio-communication stations are individually licensed at a fee of $50 each and users need to obtain a licence before adding new stations to their networks. Under the new network-licensing scheme, a single licence fee will apply for each network instead of each radio-communication station. Licensees will also no longer need to apply for individual licences and pay licence fees when new portable/mobile stations are added. The removal of individual licensing of mobile/portable stations will help reduce the administrative work for licensees and result in lower licence fees for the various categories as shown below:

i) Localised private networks operating not more than 5 watts output power for communication within confined areas

The annual licence fee for this category will be reduced from $50 per station to $100 per network, regardless of the number of portable/mobile stations in the network. This will translate to substantial savings for business users of low power radio-communication devices, such as construction firms, hotels and security companies.

ii) Localised private network comprising multi-channel portable/mobile equipment with frequencies assigned by TAS for common use.

The annual frequency fee for this category will be reduced from $300 to $15 for each network. The lower frequency fee will bring businesses savings and at the same time, encourage existing licensees and new applicants to use more efficient multi-channel equipment.

iii) Wide-area private networks operating at output power of more than 5 watts

The licence fee for this category will be pegged at $500 per group of 50 portable/mobile stations (or part thereof). The new fee will help reduce the cost of businesses operating large networks such as radio taxi networks that are currently licensed at $50 per station.

iv) Public mobile networks operated by licensed public mobile operators

The following multi-tier licence fee structure will be implemented to replace the existing annual licence fee of $100 per base station for the public mobile networks:

By providing bigger discounts for larger networks, the new licence fee structure for the public mobile networks will give greater incentive to the public mobile operators to install more radio base stations so as to provide better quality of service. These public mobile networks (e.g. cellular mobile telephone, radio paging, trunked radio and mobile data) have different number of radio base stations, ranging from 40 to 600 base stations per network

These new policies will result in a reduction of $1.9 million licence fee for the radiocommunication services industry, which will translate to lowering their costs of doing businesses in Singapore. TAS will continue to review its policies and regulations to ensure that they remain relevant in the changing times and to reduce the cost of doing businesses in the telecommunication industry so that the consumers can ultimately benefit from such review.