www.iicom.org March 2012 Volume 40 Issue 1
William Webb, CTO of Neul, an innovative white space communications technology developer told Intermedia, "Many European countries will find it very difficult to open up the 700MHz band without at best massive re-planning of TV transmission. Likely, not all adopt the plan, and many not do so until well after 2015." EBU officials agree on the difficulties involved. "In practice I believe it's unlikely that we will see any actual reallocation of spectrum in Europe before 2018," said the EBU's Lieven Vermaele, "but European regulators and governments have a considerable challenge on their hands in deciding how to implement this decision. As with all ITU resolutions, the implementation falls upon individual member states. This means that European governments will have to decide on the most appropriate path to follow according to their own national circumstances, where in many cases terrestrial broadcasting platforms are growing in importance."
Getting procedural However, complex procedural arrangements now have to move into high gear to service the mobile broadband developments. "The first Conference Preparatory Meeting (CPM) for the next WRC in 2015 follows on the heels of WRC-12. Mobile broadband providers would have liked to have the issue studied in their Working Party 5D, while other services (satellite, space science, etc.) argued that such studies would be appropriate for a Joint Task Group (JTG) composed of affected Working Parties" said Wiltshire & Grannis' Tricia Paoletta and Damon Ladson. Mr Ladson is no stranger to this way of operating: he was formerly the Vice-Chair of the US delegation to WRC-2000 where IMT spectrum was first made available and was the primary US spokesperson for IMT deliberations. "The US and others advocated and prevailed at WRC-15 CPM that studies for mobile broadband including IMT be done in a Joint Task Group of a number of Study Groups. A JTG comprised of Study Groups 4,5,6 and 7 will undertake these sometime contentious studies over the next several years."
How far are new spectrum allocations justified for the future mobile communications sector? Forecasting actual traffic growth has been a precarious business for at least a decade, but at the last WRC, the Apple iPhone had only just appeared on the market. Today, no one in the industry doubts the traffic explosion and implied spectrum demand that has recently taken place. "An averagely used SmartPhone places a demand on spectrum that’s 24 times more than the feature phones that preceded it. Tablets place a demand on spectrum that’s about 120 times more," commented FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski at WRC-12. A white paper released immediately prior to WRC-12 by the UMTS Forum, an industry group representing the mobile cellular community, argued persuasively for more spectrum to keep pace with evaluations of what would be needed, but did not specify a particular band as a primary target, instead choosing to request that identification and study should be performed for WRC-15.1 By common consent, largely because of the smartphone revolution, network traffic has beaten the most aggressive estimates that were undertaken in the early to mid-2000s - a time when most existing 3G networks were in fact significantly underutilized. The white paper points out "The mobile data traffic in 2010 was more than 5 times greater than some of the estimates for Report ITU-R M.2072. Moreover, the data traffic being experienced by some operators in 2011 was even greater than some of the 2020 forecasts given in Report ITU-R M.2072." Given the recent impetus to cloud computing and moves towards greater broadband participation around the world as well a likely aggregation of e-government and other services into cloudlike approaches, more demand still, rather than less, is increasingly likely. The UMTS Forum says it wants to see harmonization as well as the extra spectrum. "Harmonisation of IMT frequency bands is more important than ever," says the UMTS Forum and continues: "Frequency band harmonisation is by far the most critical enabler for a large and diversified choice of terminal devices in the market. 1 Spectrum for future development of IMT-2000 and IMT-Advanced, UMTS Forum, January 2012, http://www.umts-forum.org. The paper comments that "during WRC-07, countries and administrations recognised the need for additional IMT spectrum and identified new bands for IMT. Though significant progress has been achieved since WRC-07, the spectrum currently identified for IMT networks is still far below the amount recommended in ITU-R Report M.2078. The identified amount of IMT spectrum varies between 664 MHz and 947 MHz depending on the Region, when the calculated minimum spectrum demand is 1280 MHz."
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IPTV Analysis News Analysis WRC-12
They continued: "The reality is that to successfully secure new mobile broadband spectrum at WRC-15, compatibility studies must be completed in a manner satisfactory to satellite, space services and others. Otherwise, there could be another WRC battle similar to the IMT versus C-band satellite battle that dominated WRC-07. That would not serve the interests of proponents of additional mobile broadband spectrum, since disagreement at WRC-15 will lead to
The need for allocation