Downloadable Files

• Spectrum Licence Service Areas by type of service
• Competitive Licensing Service Areas
• Demographic Areas
• Saturation map layers
• Spectrum Grid map layers
• Data formats supported

Spectrum Licence Service Areas

The following table contains geographic objects describing spectrum licences service areas awarded for Local Multipoint Communication Systems (LMCS), Railway, communication systems in the 38GHz frequency band and Fixed Wireless Access systems (FWA) in the 3.4GHz frequency band. The files contain the following information for each service area: the service area name, the total number of households in the area, the area (in square kilometers), the licensee, the number of cells in the area and the province in which the service area is located. The LMCS service areas were awarded to three selected licensees by Industry Minister John Manley, on October 29, 1996. The Railway spectrum licence was awarded to the Railway Association of Canada, on April 1st, 2000.

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Competitive Licensing Service Areas

The following table contains the lists of the provisional winners at the closing of the spectrum auctions. The residual auction in the 2300 and 3500 MHz frequency bands took place in 2005. The auction in the 2300 and 3500 MHz frequency bands took place in Febraury 2004. The auction for additional PCS spectrum in the 2GHz frequency range took place in 2001. The auction for spectrum in the 24 and 38GHz frequency bands took place in 1999.

(*) The map layer a4_combined includes the existing licences based on the Tier areas resulting from the February 2004 auction and the map layer a4_incumbents contains other existing spectrum and radio licences falling inside the frequency bands of interest before the initiation of the auction.

The following table contains the map layers defined for the service areas competitive licensing. There are four tiers of service areas that the Department may use for future licensing activity as described in the document "Service Areas for Competitive Licensing". Tier 1 is a single national service area. Tier 2, Tier 3, and Tier 4 service areas are provided in three sets of files below. The Tier 4 file was modified in 2003 where the number of areas was increased to 172. All the Tier files were modified in 2004 to calculate the population using 2001 census data. The files contain geographic objects describing the service areas, the service area number, the service area name, the total population and the area (in square kilometres).

The following table contains the map layer defined for the Local Telephone Service Areas which generally correspond to the wireline service areas of the local telephone companies operating in Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia. Population data is based on Statistics Canada 2001 census data.

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Demographic areas

The following table contains coloured spectrum grid cells map layers to identify urban versus rural areas as prescribed by the radiocommunication information circular RIC-27 Identification of Urban Vs Rural Areas. The first set of files cover all of Canada and the second set cover only the urban areas where the density is larger than 25 households per square kilometers. (The files in the second set are much smaller.)

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Saturation map layers

The following table contains the saturation index information for the entire country, as described in RIC-6 Spectrum Consumption and the Saturation Index. The files are those of the Spectrum Grid, in which each cell is represented with a different colour, depending on its saturation index.

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Spectrum Grid map layers

The following table contains the spectrum grid map layers.

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Data formats supported

Data formats supported are the MapInfo native format and the MapInfo import format. The MapInfo native format is used by the MapInfo Professional desktop mapping software of MapInfo Corporation. The MapInfo import format is an import/export text format supported by major desktop mapping and GIS softwares.

All the map layers are compressed into standard ZIP files and can be uncompressed by the WinZip utility or other utilities that support the ZIP format. The MapInfo native format compressed files may contain 4 or 5 separate files. The MapInfo import format compressed files contain 2 separate files.

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