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22007 Volume 35 Number 5 www.iicom.org

CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE

PageTitle! subject Author

number

4Spectrum Review: WRC 07 - what did

Martin Simsit achieve?

9Spectrum Review: 2008, the Digital

Michael NewlandsDividend, and more

13Italy moves the digital goalposts on

Frank Dunnefootball's TV rights

16Ofcom Global Communications Sur-

Ofcom UKvey: key statistics

18Broadband policy in Europe and Asia:

Ovum Consultancya Comparison

30 Citizen Journalism: a Primer Terry Flew

We apologise for the late running of this issue of Intermedia, the last of 2007. Also, weapologise for the reproduction quality of the graphs on pages 25-27, which were not designed

for magazine reproduction but are nevertheless, we feel, informative.

www.iicom.org Dec 2007 Volume 35 Number 5 3

Spectrum Review: WRC 07

In October and November 2007 five thousand experts attended an international confer-ence, held every four years, which co-ordinates the global use of the airwaves for eve-rything from cell phones and TVs to garage door openers. The World Radio Conferenceagreed a massive extension in the spectrum for mobiles, hammering another nail in thecoffin of the traditional 'command and control' approach to spectrum management.

Another step towards spectrum liberalisation

By Martin Sims

Changing spectrum policy is often seen as amatter of convincing regulators to adopt more

modern ideas. In one sense this is true, but thepower of the technological and market forces push-ing towards a more liberalised approach is oftenignored. As three leading experts, Cave, Doyle andWebb (2007), argued recently: "a command andcontrol approach is becoming more difficult to man-age as an ever expanding range of applicationsappears ..•Now the World Radio Conference hasended, it is worth recounting how powerfully theseforces have made their presence felt. The key bat-tleground in WRC-07 was agenda item 1.4: meetingthe spectrum needs for the future development ofmobile systems, and this has proved a major forcein encouraging a more flexible approach to spec-trum management.

Future spectrum needs for mobile systems

Over the next 15 years the International Telecom-munications Union (ITU) expects that mobile serv-ices from 2G to 4G will require greatly increasedaccess to spectrum. It estimates that by 2020 thetotal bandwidth requirement will be 1280 MHz ifuser demand is low and 1720 MHz if user demandis high .. To take Region 1 as an example, the higherestimate is for1 027 MHz of new spectrum: a neartripling of the requirement.

This is a great deal of bandwidth, and finding it inevi-tably puts pressure on the strict implementation ofthe command and control model of spectrum alloca-tion where regulators or governments decide whatservice or technology should use a particular rangeof frequencies. To put it more simply: if mobile needsso much more spectrum, where is it going to comefrom? It's a question of sharing with other serviceswhich already occupy a band or moving closer tothose services than would previously have beenconsidered.

The ITU identified six candidate bands for newmobile services: 410-430 MHz, 450-470 MHz, 470-806/862 MHz, 2300-2400 MHz, 2700-2900 MHz,3400-4200 MHz and 4400-4990 MHz. In the firsttwo bands the ITU says mobile can share with lowand medium power broadcasting services using

4 Volume 35 Number 5 Dec 2007

mitigation techniques, but says further studies areneeded to resolve the interference problems raisedby high power broadcasting and fixed services inthese bands. In the 2700-2900 MHz band there isthe issue of sharing between mobile services, aero-nautical radio-navigation services and meteorologi-cal radars to be resolved. In the 3400 - 4200 MHzband, one of the problems is co-existence betweenradio-location services and fixed satellite servicescurrently using this band. (see table)

Achieving concord between the 200 nations rep-resented at World Radio Conferences is inevitablydifficult, so unsurprisingly not all the agreementsreached on new spectrum for mobile cover thewhole world. WRC-07 identified two global IMTallocations: 450-470MHz, currently used for broad-casting and land mobile services; and 2.3-2.4 GHzcurrently used for satellite and wireless broadband.There are also three non-global allocations. In theUHF broadcasting band 698-862MHz has beenidentified in the Americas (Region 2) and in nineAsia Pacific countries (Region 3); 790-862MHzhas been allocated in Regions 1 and 3. The ITU isdescribing 3.4-3.6GHz (C-Band) as not a global allo-cation, but one accepted by many countries.

In terms of the wider evolution of spectrum policy,what this agreement means is that in order toaccommodate mobile's increasing demand for spec-trum the administrations gathered at WRC-07 hadto put it in bands previously allocated for other serv-ices. These primary allocations, as they are known,have been turned into co-primary allocations or splitinto primary and secondary allocations. Openingup bands to several possible services facilitatesa liberalized approach to spectrum managementwhere the market decides which is the highest valueservice. This approach may not be adopted in allcountries but the agreement reached at WRC-07 forthe expansion of mobile services creates the spaceto apply an increasingly liberalized approach to thiseconomically important area.

Furthermore, as the ITU preparatory documentaccepted, there was international consensus aboutwhich band to choose. The diversity of nationalapproaches to next generation mobile services is

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forcing the ITU to be as open as possible aboutallocating bands in order to accommodate all itsmembers. The Conference Chairman, Fran90isRancy, said the agreements struck at WRC-07would enable the use of mobile for the next 30 yearswhile protecting those services which already usethe identified bands. He said countries could choosewhich bands to use depending on the importance ofthe other applications in these bands.

While changing the ITU Radio Regulations wouldnot compel national administrations to admit mobileservices into these new bands, it certainly makes iteasier for those countries seeking to take a flexibleapproach. The Regulations provide a pre-testedframework where certain applications are guaran-teed protection from interference from neighbouringcountries. Having such a structure readily availablemay encourage more traditionally minded adminis-trations to implement greater flexibility.

The identification of spectrum for advanced mobileservice is so hotly contested because it sends aclear signal to the ICT industry about the directionfuture product development should take. 'Manufac-turers will now start embedding in their terminals allthose five frequencies,' said ITU Secretary GeneralDr Hamadoun Toure. 'What we will have is morechoice for consumers, more choice for operatorsand more flexibility. We have an opportunity here fordeveloping countries to increase their coverage byusing lower frequencies.'

Some observers say WRC agreements are nothingmore than mood music. They don't force countriesto use or not use a band for a particular service ortechnology. However, they are enormously influen-tial mood music. One spectrum expert said that theywere just a signal to the CEO. If you want to buildan application in a specific band, the CEO will askif it has a global ITU allocation. If the answer is yes,a reasonable number of countries are likely to allowthe use of the equipment in that band. That meansa reasonably sized market and so means a reason-able number of sales and the CEO will say yes tothe new product launch.

To put it simply: the more ITU mobile allocations, thegreater the range of products and services operatingin bands previously allocated to single technologies.

Technology neutrality: the new orthodoxy

The need to find new spectrum for mobile is onepressure unpicking the stricter forms of commandand control spectrum management. Another isthe growing impracticality of restricting technologychoice. The outcry against the European Commis-sion's move to mandate DVB-H as the Europeanmobile TV technology and the Commission's even-tual backtracking is the best recent example of this.Secondly, technology specificity in the mobile field is

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Spectrum Review: WRC 07

being undermined by the pressure to make intema-tional standards embrace a wider range of technolo-gies. A good example of this is the general supportfor getting WiMAX accepted into the standard formobile 3G services, known as IMT-2000. This onlybegan in November 2006, but has proceeded withremarkable speed, considering this is the first timean attempt has been made to add a new air inter-face to the standard.

For regulators, opening up the standard is a way ofencouraging greater competition and for industry, itis a way of ensuring they do not miss out on whatmay be a more cost effective technology. The onlyadministrations to make significant objections to theinclusion of WiMAX were China and Germany, andthese were largely procedural in nature. There wasalso broad support from industry, but with a protestcoming from Qualcomm, which has developed apotential Wi MAX competitor: Flash-OFDM.

When WiMAX was accepted into IMT-2000 at aWRC pre-meeting, none of those who had previ-ously expressed concern raised a formal objection.Alongside the policy macro-analysis to which thisarticle aspires, it is worth noting that the WiMax'ssmooth passage also reflects the extraordinaryatmosphere of international co-operation whichprevails at WRC meetings. If a significant number ofcountries want something, the conference usuallyfeels it is their job to give it to them.

The WRC pre-meeting, known as the Radiocom-munications Assembly, also agreed to combinethe allocations for 3G and the spectrum which wasbeing considered for systems beyond 3G, usuallyknow as 4G. This further undermines the strictercommand and control approach. For example, itencourages countries to allow what is usually seenas an "internet access" technology - WiMAX - to setup networks in previously "mobile" frequencies.

Updating the ITU Radio Regulations

A further example of how the development of tech-nology is undermining the stricter forms of commandand control can be found in ITU Resolution 951,which considered whether the Radio Regulationsshould be updated to take account of convergence.(Debated under agenda item 7.1) Speaking at arecent conference the chairman of the WRC-07 pre-paratory meeting, Kavouss Arasteh, said

"Unfortunately we are still working on definitions[drawn up) 50 years ago. We have a classical sepa-ration of services: we call this fixed; this mobile; theother broadcasting; whereas in practice conver-gence means fixed [can be) mobile, mobile [can be]fixed and broadcasting is all of them." The Europeanregulators organisation, CEPT, has pointed out thatsome administrations are unsure under which cat-egorisation convergent services should fall. (over)

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