We examine the implications of the WRC-07 agreement for advanced mobile services and also for satellite. On the Framework Review we interview Commissioner Reding, consider the varied stance towards the digital dividend and hear broadcasters concerns about service neutrality.
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Although the legislative Framework Review proposals published by the Commission this month contain no plans to restrict member states' freedom to allocate spectrum as they choose, the same cannot be said of a document setting out long term policy goals released at the same time.
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44 operators have paid a total of €475 000 euros (4,434,000 krona) for a series of regional licences in the 3.6-3.8GHz band in Sweden.
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Covering France in very high-speed mobile Internet access is "a major political concern," the Autorité de Régulation des Communications Électroniques et des Postes (ARCEP) said in a summary of responses to its public consultation on the digital dividend. With mobile communications preparing to follow the same track as fixed services toward high-speed and very high-speed access, many commentators argued reassignment and harmonisation of frequencies below 1 GHz are crucial, the regulator said. Broadcasters, however, opposed any decision on the digital dividend until after switchover.
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Ofcom's plans are based on utilising the combined benefits of MPEG4 and DVB-T2. MPEG4 is a compression technology which is 100% more efficient that the current standard, MPEG2; DVB-T2 is a new transmission technology which offers 30% efficiency savings, says the regulator. Taken together and combined with other unrelated factors Ofcom argues that the capacity of the existing digital TV spectrum can be increased by 160%. This would allow the creation of four high definition (HDTV) channels or 20 new standard definition channels without losing any of the current digital terrestrial services.
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Eighty-one countries and territories in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union (ITU Region 1) added their names to a list of nations that made a mobile allocation to frequencies between 3,400 and 3,600 MHz and identified them for IMT, according to the final acts of the World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-07). Protections agreed at the four-week treaty conference to update the international Radio Regulations require coordination with neighboring countries and specific power limits at the border. Aeronautical mobile is not included in the spectrum moves.
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PT: Broadcasters fear the presumption of service neutrality in the broadcasting bands could cause interference and undermine other policy goals like media diversity. What's your reaction to this?
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The most controversial aspect of the European Commission's Framework Review proposals is the plan to create a European Telecom Market Authority (ETMA) which is intended to act as a 'one stop shop' for acquiring and licensing cross-border wireless services.
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When digital switchover is completed in the UK programme making and special events services (PMSE) - predominantly wireless microphone users - will lose access to the 14 channels that they share with analogue TV services. Ofcom's original 2005 plans to auction all the frequencies released by digital switchover provoked an outcry from the PMSE community who said that as a disparate group of small companies they could not compete against the giants of the mobile phone industry in bidding for the freed-up bands. This has led to Ofcom modifying its proposals.
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The key achievement of this years World Radio Conference is to identify a selection of bands for use by 3G and 4G mobile services, now collectively known as IMT. The Conference Chairman, François Rancy, said the agreements struck would enable the use of mobile for the next 30 years while protecting those services which already use the identified bands. He said countries could choose which bands to use depending on the importance of the other applications in these bands.
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Last night delegates from around the world agreed that the IMT bands should be the following: the VHF band - 450-470MHz; 2.3-2.4GHz; and C band - 3.4-3.6GHz. It is thought that this designation would apply in all regions. The UHF band - 698-862MHz - has also been identified for IMT but only in Region 2 (North and South America) and in six countries of Region 3 (Asia, Russia and Australia).
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Norway's auction of 2.6GHz and 2010-2025MHz licences, all expected to be used for fixed, nomadic and mobile wireless broadband services, has closed after seven days and 78 rounds of bidding. Offers for the spectrum started at around €2.5M but increased more than tenfold during the contest to a total of €29M (£20.5M). Of the eight companies that participated five were awarded licences in 2.6GHz: Arctic Wireless, Craig Wireless Systems, Hafslund Telekom, NetCom and Telenor; and Inquam Broadband was awarded the 2010MHz licence.
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However, the proposals on the digital dividend are not as radical as had earlier been indicated. The Commission isn't proposing to set rules on what should be done with the released analogue TV frequencies, but it is using its powers to persuade member states to use them for new services like wireless broadband.
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The TV and radio industries are firing a shot across the bows of the European Commission as it prepares to announce its proposals for the review of the Electronic Communications Framework Directive on 13 November. The broadcasters main bone of contention is the presumption of service neutrality which the Commission want to introduce in most frequencies, including the broadcasting bands. The proposal is based on a classic liberalisation argument: the removal of restrictions will allow services to migrate to the bands where they can most effectively be delivered, so ensuring the most efficient use of the airwaves.
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We also consider the competing arguments on the economic effect of allocating most of the digital dividend to mobile; as well as pointing up new developments in Europe in the commercial deployment of mass market UWB and inflight mobile services.
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The agreement to include WiMAX in IMT-2000, which includes the dominant 3G technologies, came on 18 October at the ITU Radiocommunication Assembly (RA-07) which precedes WRC-07. This was a major victory for the WiMAX camp, which has spend the past few years fighting to get access to spectrum. Gaining the ITU's agreement is a considerable achievement for the proponents of WiMAX - notably Intel - because it has been done in only 10 months, an unusually tight timescale.
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