Convergencia Research, Consultoría especializada en Latinoamérica y Caribe
Tuesday, April 03, 2018

Shared spectrum to be a topic to discuss and opens good expectations for IoT

The ICT Secretariat has placed to public consultation a proposal for the attribution of declared frequency bands of shared use. The project establishes that the bands do not require authorization for their use, provided that the conditions and technical parameters established by the regulator are respected.

There is not in the current Argentine regulation the concept of unlicensed bands, only a distinction between direct assignments or by competition. The Government's consultation responds to the demand of companies related to the deployment of IoT: in May last year, Artimar, EXO, Solidmation and RGA had asked the ENACOM (National Communications Agency) to adopt standards that are already used worldwide for their regulation: that it be a free band; without a license or entry barriers; and certified equipment to guarantee compliance with the maximum powers established by local regulations. Applicants claim that this type of regulation would ensure the growth of LPWA technologies such as LoRa, Sigfox, Zigbee.

In a talk with Convergencialatina, Mauricio Jancic, manager of the Business Unit of Artimar for South America, evaluated that if it advances, "it will activate the IoT market, which is very segmented. Nevertheless, they still have to define the subject of powers. In Chile for example, they established low powers and the applications did not work, I do not believe that this would happen here.”

In fact, the consultation is a second movement of the Secretariat. In August 2016, it created the Internet Services Working Group, which without further repercussions held some debates and a first consultation - not so public, with only 16 participants: eight companies, four chambers, one university and three consultants participated.

From that consultation the demand to provide a regulatory framework for the licensed development of spectrum, which facilitates the deployment and growth of IoT, without imposing service or technology restrictions arose.

Among mobile operators there is suspicion: they claim that the use of unlicensed spectrum "should not affect" those who did pay for the use. They point out that spectrum does not accompany the growth of data demand and they ask for a spectrum plan before the deployment of 5G begins. In addition, they require establishing criteria to guarantee the quality of services.

As expected, the companies suggest that spectrum dedicated to IoT should not be granted and instead allocate more spectrum to expand these services on current commercial mobile networks.

In general terms, it is agreed that different data acquisition technologies can coexist in the same frequency band with secondary allocation, as long as they do not interfere.

Characteristics

While the spectrum marketing scheme guarantees a high level of spectral efficiency, quality of service and low levels of interference, a sharing scheme can further improve the efficiency of spectrum use. Although in the latter case, the administration requires more precautions, which may have other types of problems, such as a greater degree of interference.

Visions on spectrum management vary. The government is looking towards the proposals of the OECD: that the commercialization is complementary to the primary allocation, that the promotion of unlicensed spectrum and of the shared use is allowed. The OECD argues that there are measures capable of resolving bottlenecks around the scarcity of bands or inefficiency in use.

With more precautions, the ITU proposes to combine management models and find a balance between economic and technical efficiency and its social repercussions. In this regard, the FUNDTIC foundation emphasizes to take into account the recommendations of the ITU Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R). FUNDTIC demands that ENACOM be given prior intervention in order to have an opinion on the regulation of all shared services and propose the spectrum to be used in accordance with the Frequency Attribution Table. Among other issues, it claims that shared spectrum is associated with the regulation of service and technical standards of the system or equipment of that service.

The discussion is about whether this is the way to ensure that there are no technical incompatibilities and adequate protection against interference. The consultation of the Setic puts into consideration the bands but not schemes of commercialization or forms of spectrum sharing.

Trends

Several forms of sharing are already implemented in the world: The Licensed Shared Access (LSA) model adopted by several European countries for the 2.3 GHz band establishes that new mobile operators can access a band of previously assigned spectrum. A management system determines where the frequency can be used.  In the same band two types of permits are delivered: one for incumbent users and one for users under LSA.

In the United States, the AWS-3 Band (695 - 1710 MHz, 1755 - 1780 MHz, 2155 - 2180 MHz auctioned in 2015) includes sharing through the establishment of geographic protection zones for federal users. On its part, in the 3.5GHz band, three levels of access are proposed: 1) for Defense Radars, 2) for fixed satellite services and 3) for CBRS (Citizens broadband Radio Service), which include IMT, WiFi and others.)

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