# Understanding EU868 restrictions

**URL:** https://community.morsemicro.com/t/understanding-eu868-restrictions/1341
**Category:** General
**Created:** [January 28, 2026, 2:29pm UTC](https://community.morsemicro.com/t/understanding-eu868-restrictions/1341 "2026-01-28T14:29:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 6

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### Author: ![nate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e95f7d/32.png) [@nate](https://community.morsemicro.com/u/nate)
#### Post date: [March 16, 2026, 10:22am UTC](https://community.morsemicro.com/t/understanding-eu868-restrictions/1341/6 "2026-03-16T10:22:34Z")

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Mirroring [this post here](https://community.morsemicro.com/t/eu-band-restrictions-for-halow/782/6) as it’s probably relevant to this discussion:

> I’ve been combing through ETSI EN 300 220 on this and it’s not actually clear that channel switching is required for single-channel operation or avoiding the duty cycle. It’s one possible mode of achieving AFA equivalence but not by any means the only way to achieve compliance.
> 
> The requirements are:
> 
> - Polite spectrum access: already satisfied by 802.11ah with CSMA/CA and CCA;
> - Random deferral: already satisfied by 802.11ah with the binary exponential backoff;
> - CCA threshold: configurable in 802.11ah via the energy detect threshold;
> - Minimum transmitter off time & listening time: already satisfied by 802.11ah with the mandatory idle time after transmission;
> - Maximum transmitter on time: already satisfied by 802.11ah with the TXOP limits, further improved by limiting PPDU aggregation.
> 
> With that, equivalent coexistence behaviour to AFA is already demonstrated and there’s no reason that the duty cycle can’t be avoided or that 802.11s shouldn’t be usable within ETSI regions?

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