At the 22nd regular international annual meeting of radio communication experts, which took place from 2nd to 5th February 2016 at Faculty for Electrical Engineering in Ljubljana, Slovenia,
Vafer presented the project Re-use of public infrastructure for mobile network roll-out – Example of installing base stations on high-voltage power lines of the electricity system
In 2014 a multiband-frequency auction for the allocation of LTE network frequencies was conducted in Slovenia. To achieve the goals of LTE coverage, mobile operators have been using existing base station locations as well as building new ones, as existing locations alone are not enough to fulfill the auction’s coverage obligations or fulfill the commercial coverage goals of an operator. These new locations can be greenfield locations, where a new mast with broadcast antennas and other equipment is built on existing (public) infrastructure. Among such options of base station rollout are high- voltage power lines of the electricity network. Utilized by quite some operators abroad, Slovenia has yet to see such installations. This type of mobile network rollout has its limitations, but also has several positives. The directive 2014/61/EU on measures to reduce the cost of deploying high-speed electronic communications networks foresees the re-use of public infrastructure, with this re-use limiting the construction necessary in a rollout. In 2015 Stelkom, a company dealing in excess capacities of the electricity industry, undertook an analysis of the interaction between the electrical and mobile networks, and drafted the conditions of using the high-voltage power lines to install mobile operator base stations to ensure a safe and reliable functioning of these stations. Following are the conclusions of the electricity and mobile interaction analysis and the key conditions for a safe and reliable functioning of base stations installed on the high- voltage power lines of the electricity network. For more details please contact: Vesna Prodnik Pepevnik, CEO
