Ubiik announced a partnership in May 2024 with Electricity Canada, the national forum of Canadian Electric Utilities, beginning the first 1.8GHz private LTE support system for telecom networks in the country. The project is wide in scope, with Ubiik and Electricity Canada partnering with many semiconductor and other partners, aiming to adopt secure and scalable LTE systems. Sequans, GCT, Semtech, Itron and Sony have committed to the project. So far, the use of the spectrum has been limited to the sole ownership of Canadian Electrical Utilities. With this partnership, the 1.8GHz environment will open up further for other uses and companies to develop.

The 1800-1830 MHz band (1.8GHz) thus far has been limited to only the Canadian Electrical Utilities, and without a partnership with other commercial vendors, it has struggled to reach much utilization. The benefit would be two-fold according to Ubiik – allowing for more use by the regular citizens of Canada, while also helping market opportunities for the companies involved.

TH Peng, CEO at Ubiik said, “To have 30MHz of spectrum allocated solely for utility use is the envy of utilities across the world. We therefore made it our mission to create and strengthen the 1.8GHz ecosystem through collaborating with our industry partners.” 

In the past, vendors have been hesitant to support 1.8GHz because the perceived smaller size of the utility telecom market. However, things have changed to support greater investment in this part of the industry. Regulatory drivers ensure reliability of the grid, there is now a requirement to rollout networks to support versatile edge applications, electric vehicles, renewables, battery storage, all make this change possible, according to Ubiik. This will all be able to help deploy smart energy across Canada, according to the Director of LPWA modules at Semtech. 

This change will fundamentally alter Canada’s private wireless space. The new opening will enable companies to utilize a larger amount of space and bring greater connection to Canada. It is important to continue to monitor private wireless’ growth outside of the United States to fully capture the development of the industry. You can find out more beyond the summary through Ubiik’s PR release here. To return to locallte.com, click here.