UNII-3 in the UK

[cmr]

I cannot seem to select any of the UNII-3 channels for an MR56 access point in the UK despite them being legal to use since 2017 before the model was designed, let alone sold:

Decision to make Wireless Telegraphy Exemption Regulations 2017 (ofcom.org.uk)

Are these channels able to be used elsewhere, or does anyone else in the UK have the ability to use them?

[KarstenI]

First I wanted to write "Hey, you guys are not even in the EU and you also drive on the wrong side. It's supposed to be different". But then I remembered that I also can't enable them:

(But at least we drive on the correct side of the street😀)

[rhbirkelund]

It wouldn't be the first time that Meraki had blocked use of certain channels eventhough they are allowed for use.

I'd open a case with Meraki and ask why they are not available. And perhaps CC my local SE/Sales Rep..

[GiacomoS]

Hey team,

Thank you for flagging this up. I poked our compliance team to ask for clarification, but I do endorse @rhbirkelund , a case may help us track this better 😁

I do wonder if there is a matter of conformity to take into consideration, and maybe additional certifications, but I'm not super aware of the various legal implications; the compliance team will be able to dispel the fog, I'm sure. 

Will keep you posted once I get an answer, or if anyone has a case open and gets it before me, please do share! 😁

Giac

[GiacomoS]

@KarstenI , if you are accustomed to driving on the right, driving on the left is not that bad... until you take a roundabout. 😜

[KarstenI]

Just looked at some other installations for UNII-3:

Australia: available

Singapore: available

a couple of other EU: not available

@GiacomoS In UK I always took a cab in the past. I was driving by myself in Australia. But I don't remember if they had any roundabouts ...

And I don't even want to think about driving myself in the famous Swinden roundabout. 🙂

[GiacomoS]

Hey team,

I wanted to close the loop on this one, as I managed to get some feedback. 

With regards to the UNII-3 band in the EU, while some EU countries allow UNII-3 (mainly the UK at this time), the entire EU does not behave as a "harmonized domain". Some countries will allow for UNII-3 usage but at such a low power that it is effectively useless for wireless communication. Therefore, at this time, we do not certify for UNII-3 on the EU(CE) profile.

To add some more context, the EU has always been treated as a single regulatory domain (CE), which means that the APs have been certified to operate in the entire regulatory domain in the same way regardless of the country. Historically, UNII-3 has not been part of the bands that APs could leverage, due to the low power requirements imposed by the European community when using the band. We are in early stages of adoption here, so it may take some time before we start seeing this make its way into the regulatory domain itself. 

In this case, I'd say provide the feedback through a feature request on Dashboard (Give your feedback button on the bottom right); it's good to highlight the use cases, so that our product management team can better understand if/how/when to implement this in the future.

Thank you all!

Giac

[cmr]

Thank you for the explanation @GiacomoS   I'm guessing that Cisco hasn't realised that the UK left the EU almost two years ago, but I'll let them know via the feedback button 😉

[GiacomoS]

Wait, when did that happen?! I need to watch the news more! 😜

I hear you @cmr , I'm not an expert on the certification procedures, but I think there's a lot of admin and bureaucracy required thanks to the UK not being part of the EU anymore. To my awareness, the regulatory domain has not yet been "split" and I'm unsure of how this is being/going to be tackled at a political level. 

Let's hope that we'll have some better clarity soon, so we can watch the blossoming of UK Telecoms 😄

Giac

[Joe360]

The regulatory domain now shows as UK instead of CE. Comparing a UK site to a German one

Does this mean UNII-3 may become available soon to the MR36 / Z3 and other units?

I did try raising this a support ticket back in June and was asked to submit it as a feature request, which didn't get a response. Below are the Ofcom articles stating when the regulations changed.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0032/98159/5p8-Regs.pdf from 2017 where 5725-5850 MHz are permitted

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0036/198927/6ghz-statement.pdf from January 2020 where 5725-5850 have DFS requirements removed.

Joe

[GiacomoS]

Hey @Joe360 ,

As I mentioned previously there needs to be a certification process before anything actually changes. These can take some time to happen, especially since the UNII-3 band is not widely available in Europe yet (or to be precise, it is still dedicated to just SRDs). 

The feature requests would not normally get a response, as it is a way for our product development team to collect your feedback and prioritise new features and products accordingly. I'd recommend to keep on leveraging it, including the context of why you think this would be beneficial for your company and/or customers, so a strong case can be built.

Hope this helps!

Giac

[matt-ca · Accepted solution]

UNII-3 is in the UK now isn't it as of the past few days?

[matt-ca]

UNII-3 (UK) Support for Meraki APs November 15, 2022

Wireless networks

Meraki access points now support UNII-3 channels in the UK/ETSI regulatory domain. This feature is available today for dashboard configuration.

[Squuiid]

No it isn't. Just checked and still greyed out.

[matt-ca]

yes it is being running it since last week on MR56, MR57

[matt-ca]

One of my AP's in UK that has been on UNII-3 since November 4th - the post above is the announcement in the dashboard I got yesterday when logging in.

[cmr]

I have access to two organisations and in one the banner is at the top regarding UNI3 and I can select the channels, in the other it is no and I cannot select them.  I'd guess this feature is being rolled out in stages.

[Joe360]

It looks like its being rolled out still as some Orgs show it as available and others its greyed out.

Does it make a difference if the Org / Site has MR33 vs MR36 APs?

[cmr]

The Org I can see it in has MR55/56, the one I cannot has MR32 through to 9166 so it could be older models are going to be added later? 

[pjc]

General question about the UNII-3 channels...If everything is working fine, and I'm using 20MHz channels, will enabling UNII-3 channels cause issues in that are all clients able to use these higher channels?  If not I could creating dead spots for some clients in the building where AP's switch to these higher channels.  I appreciate that these channels have a lower maximum power transmit rating (23dBm)

Thanks

[KarstenI]

Nowadays it is quite unlikely that you'll find a relevant client that doesn't support these channels. But if you need to have legacy clients. it definitely could be. The first Apple Retina iPad2 is one of the devices that I remember not to have UNII-3 support.

[Joe360]

Has anyone actually seen an access point use these channels?

Across multiple organisations I haven't seen an MR36, MR44 or MR33 actually use one of these UNII-3 channels.

I've tried creating a new RF profile for an MR36 with only those channels enabled and it seems to ignore the request and uses a different channel anyway when you try and do this with an MR33 it comes back with an error message that the selected channels aren't supported.

[matt-ca]

yes been using them on MR56 & MR57 AP's since November.

[Joe360]

Did you have to manually set them on the AP itself or via an RF profile?

I've just seen manually setting on the AP directly seems to work but the profiles for auto channel don't seem to get used.

[matt-ca]

We use fixed channels so setting them manually on each AP.