Something that's always been a nuisance is that the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has made it's frequency allocation tables (i.e. the table which shows which frequencies are allocated to which services in which countries) something that has to be paid for if you want a full copy. The 'ITU Radio Regulations' is a large set of documents that describe radio usage and the heart of it is a set of 3 regional tables that allocate frequencies to specific uses and currently costs 252 Swiss Francs (about GBP107 at today's exchange rate). If you just want to know whether fixed links have an allocation at 8 GHz in France, that's rather a lot to pay.

I was delighted, therefore, to discover that the Region 1 (Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asiatic Russia) and Region 3 (Asia and Australasia) information can now be access for free on the web-site of telecommunications consultants 'InterConnect Communications'. Their Electronic Frequency Allocation Table (E-FAT) service allows you to query the ITU tables viewing either the whole table or just the allocations to specific services.

A similar service, but only for specific European countries (well certain CEPT members) is provided by the European Communications Office (ECO) in the form of their European Frequency Information Services (EFIS).

Dead handy!