Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) has decided to leave unlicensed radio devices free of the taxman's reach for now.

As previously reported, the MIC was considering imposing a “Radio Utilization Fee” that would apply to devices that operate in license-free spectrum, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, UWB and similar technologies.

One factor behind the decision to defer action was multi-band devices, such as Apple's iPhone, which operate in both unlicensed and licensed bands. This raised the question of whether the proposed "utilization fee" would be an appropriate mechanism to manage both bands.

But a committee member also cited public reaction to the proposed fee, which included responses from the Wi-Fi Alliance, Apple, Broadcom, Intel, Microsoft, Boeing and Buffalo in addition to numerous public and private Japanese organizations.

As a standard procedure, the matter now enters a three-year "study and review process" before it will be reconsidered.

Tags: MIC, WiFi,

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