Convergencia Research, Consultoría especializada en Latinoamérica y Caribe
Tuesday, October 27, 2015

WRC-15: The effort to allocate new bands to mobile services will not help if countries do not assign them

Convergencialatina spoke in the previous day at the beginning of the discussion of Futurecom 2015 with Oscar Leon, new Executive Secretary of the Inter-American Telecommunications Commission (CITEL).

In a talk with Convegencialatina, Oscar León, new Executive Secretary of the Inter-American Telecommunications Commission (CITEL), said the World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) to be held from 2 to 27 November at Geneva, will allow one to have more spectrum allocated to mobile services, "but if we see the reality that is happening in the countries of the region, the allocation -to Land Mobile Telecommunications (IMT)- remains very low, some countries allocate less than 200 MHz to cellular, thus although we continue talking about the issue in international agencies if there are no plans for spectrum in the countries of the region, the effort we are making will not make a difference."

He said this in relation to the goal proposed by the ITU, that by 2020 nations should have provided approximately 1,000 MHz to mobile services. The executive participated in "The future of LTE Advanced and 5G Forum" organized by 4G Americas, previous to the start of the 2015 Futurecom day.

There are 230 points to be discussed at the next spectrum meeting of the ITU, reflecting IAPs. Every proposal has the support of six or more countries of the American bloc. "Now we have to convince countries from other continents to support our efforts," he said.

The more complex agenda item for the next meeting is 1.1, which are the future IMT bands. Within this is the dispute over the UHF band, historically allocated to analog television and now to digital. There, officials are discussing the second digital dividend, which is the 600 MHz band. "In this band there is much discussion. There are countries that want it for television, others prefer to wait and others are determined, given that if they do not change now -through the harmonization in the international body- will have to wait four more years to define another global conference," the specialist said. Brazil is one of the nations against allocating this spectrum to mobile services, as broadcasting has a very strong position. But among the countries wishing to use it for mobile phones are: Mexico, United States, Canada and Colombia, among others.

The struggle with the satellite industry

In relation to another band in discussion to be allocated to IMT would be the 3.6 3.4 GHz band, since some countries complained about possible interference with the C band for satellite services. Leon said that countries that agree to allocate the "low" part of the C band to mobile services are seeking consensus elsewhere, either through support to the proposal as additional proposals: "There might even be two or three proposals for the same band and there may be several countries proposing bands already analyzed by other nations. When this happens we try to unify the proposals. This is what is happening now, before the meeting,” said Leon.

The official did not want to risk the number of points that could potentially be approved at the next meeting. "If we take into account the proposals that have the support of almost all the continents, currently very few bands would be designated to IMT, but that's not the expectation that we are witnessing, there is nothing definite and the result will be known in Geneva. It all depends on the negotiating skills of those concerned." The best band for mobile services is the 1492-1510 MHz (in the L band), which has the support of five of the six regional blocks.

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