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NGMN identifies its global spectrum requirements |
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Wednesday, 25 July 2007 |
The NGMN alliance has identified the spectrum requirements of the next generation of mobile networks in a new White Paper. This paper is released in time to provide an important input to the preparations for the World Radiocommunication Conference 2007 (WRC-07) which will be convened by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in October and November of this year in
Geneva. In the White Paper, the NGMN alliance requests the ITU to make additional spectrum available for mobile communications so that ubiquitous coverage can be achieved and future customer demands can be met.
The NGMN alliance argues that realising the ITU's vision of a global mobile society requires the availability of some harmonised spectrum in bands below 1GHz (i.e. in the band between 470 to 806/862MHz, currently mainly used for terrestrial broadcasting) as well as significant additional spectrum in higher bands (above 1GHz, and in practice above 2.2GHz where the most likely candidate is the range 3.4 to 4.2GHz). Yves Bellego, the chairman of the NGMN spectrum working group, stated that "we need ubiquitous wireless coverage to bridge the digital-divide between cities and rural areas in developed nations and to enable developing nations to offer broadband services to their populace in a cost-efficient manner. Furthermore, the demand for services with higher data rates in urban areas will lead to demand for additional spectrum which can only be found in higher bands. Finally, harmonisation, on a global scale is of paramount importance if we are to achieve economies of scale and make services commercially viable."
The NGMN alliance argues that not only the amount of spectrum made available for mobile communication (in particular International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT)) is important but also how that spectrum is divided. Hossein Moiin, the editor in charge of the NGMN White Paper on spectrum, said that "the next generation of mobile networks require channel bandwidths of up to 20MHz in bands below 1GHz and channel bandwidths of up to approximately 100MHz in higher frequency bands. Therefore, it is critical that sufficiently large and contiguous blocks of spectrum are made available to mobile operators so that they can take advantage of the new technology. For example, a channel bandwidth of 20MHz is needed to achieve throughput of 100Mbits/s with high mobility and a channel bandwidth of 100MHz is needed to provide a throughput of 1Gbits/s with low mobility."
Therefore the NGMN alliance urges WRC-07 to allocate and identify sufficient spectrum for mobile communication (and in particular for IMT) so that the future needs of the mobile customers can be met. In addition, the NGMN alliance requests that the administrations around the globe cooperate with each other on more immediate spectrum management issues. This is needed so that a vibrant ecosystem for the next generation of mobile networks can be developed while the spectrum allocated and identified by WRC-07 is being made available. A key to the development of such an ecosystem, to be fully realised when additional spectrum will be made available by WRC-07, is the global harmonisation of bands already identified for mobile communication and the assurance of seamless services based on interoperable systems across mobile networks.
www.ngmn.org |
