Mr. Marcus Matthews:

We were talking about suitable spectrum bands for implementing the model we have outlined. To briefly track back on Mr. List-Petersen's point, in terms of the position we are in now where we have the odd house which cannot be covered, it must be remembered that currently all regional providers are forced to operate in licence exempt bands, which are very noisy. The spectrum that has been allocated is not the ideal mix. It is very restrictive in terms of the options. What we have done in this written submission is outline the mixture of spectrum bands of which 700 MHz was one. That is a low band which the members have heard is for non-line-of-sight locations and to deal with trees, the drumlins and everything else one needs to bounce the signals through to make sure they are getting the 150 Mbps.

We have outlined also the position in terms of the midband. There are three options in the midband; they are in the written submission. I refer to the 2 GHz band. What is needed are continuous blocks of approximately 100 MHz per second assigned in a licence protected model. That means that the only people who can use it are, say, the regional Internet service providers, ISPs. If that licence protected model was implemented and suitable spectrum bands such as the ones outlined - a mixture of low and mid frequencies - were allocated, we would get into a situation where that lone house is suddenly covered.

We have taken that one step further and said that if we reduced the differences from the sites and took a very conservative limit - in reality one would probably do it over a longer distance - of, say, a maximum distance of approximately 6 km, it would be very interesting to see if there was a premises that was not covered.