FINAL REPORT - Stakeholders - Ofcom

Cost of ground infrastructure: The cost of ground infrastructure can also be a
significant barrier to change. The cost of a European network of VHF digital ground
stations is illustrated below.
The costs include the ground station (transceiver + antenna), but exclude the network and
ATC centre upgrade costs.
Costs in £ HFDL VDL2 VDL3 VDL4
Baseline assumed Existing HF
voice ground
station
Existing ground
station site
Existing ground
station site
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Point-to-point
Mode S
Elementary
Surveillance
Cost of ground station 33,800 42,300 105,600 77,500
Installation 6,800 8,500 21,100 15,500
Total initial cost per ground
station (1 transceiver) 40,600 50,800 126,700 93,000
Yearly maintenance costs per
ground station (1 transceiver) 3,400 4,200 10,600 7,700
Number of ground stations required
in Europe 20 150 150 150
Total ground station costs (1
transceiver) 0.8 million 7.6 million 19.0 million 14.0 million
Table 5- 13 Summary of Ground Costs for the Point-to-Point Technologies
Slow update cycles: The high costs of equipment, in an industry operating on low
margins, leads to a resistance to change and, in part, explains slow update cycles.
Operators will use airborne equipment for as long as possible to extract the greatest value
for money.
A second issue is the slow update rate of aircraft. The rate of introduction of new aircraft
is typically less than 5% of the overall fleet per year. Hence, whereas the introduction of
new technology is much cheaper when purchased with a new airframe, the reality is that,
if there is any urgency about introducing new technology (i.e. faster than 10 years), the
appropriate costs are retrofit costs which as illustrated above can exceed £80k for a
typical airframe.
A further contributory factor is the time taken to reach consensus on a particular next
step. It took time for operators to accept the upgrade to 8.33 kHz and the next major
upgrade, to Mode S enhanced surveillance, is still poorly accepted on the basis that there
is no clear value for money.
A further example of lack of consensus is in the choice of future air traffic concept. There
is consensus that something needs to be done in order to provide sufficient capacity to
meet airspace demand but little consensus as to the what. Up until now, spectrum
efficiency has not been a major issue in consideration of a future direction for concept and
technology.
Safety of life communication/public perception: Aeronautical communication provides
a safety critical service and the community has generally required the communication to
be ring-fenced into its own spectrum allocation. This has lead to a resistance to sharing
with other modes and leads to an unwillingness to piggyback onto more commercially
focussed services (such as passenger communication).