Frequency Co-ordination Services

Because of spectrum congestion these days, pretty much any radio system licensed in the UK ends up sharing a channel with someone else.
Depending on the amount of care taken in the original co-ordination process, the result could range from having no problems at all to severe co-channel interference affecting the businesses of those involved (and nobody wants that). The problem of co-channel usage is particularly severe in built-up areas - where most businesses are and where most businesses require communications.

The Utilities have a similar problem, but it's on a national scale. Every energy supply company requires communications and at certain times the requirement for communications is essential. This is where JRC frequencies come in. Most electricity utilities still maintain a resilient mobile communications network to aid supply restoration in the event of a wide-area power blackout caused by, say, a particularly bad storm. Bad weather is becoming more common and resilient communications is again becoming essential. It's been shown at depressingly regular intervals recently that the mobile phone infrastructure is not able to handle communications in an emergency (and they don't pretend to be able to do it, either). Despite this, not all CNI organisations employ their own resilient communications. If you live in an area where they don't, well....

All the JRC regional radio networks are in a segment of the radio spectrum known in the UK as Mid-Band. The actual allocation used by the Energy Industry is made up of two 1 MHz blocks centred around 140 MHz and 148.5 MHz - for more details, check out our listing on RF Man's Frequency Page. This block of spectrum is planned for national geographic coverage using a high-density channel reuse cellular assignment plan originally devised by the JRC. All requests for new assignments in this band need to be co-ordinated using planning rules based in this cellular plan.

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