1. SPECTRUM HARMONISATION IN EUROPE, TRENDS AND TOPICS
Mark Thomas, Director ECO
NPT Frekvensforum, Lillesand,
12th September 2012

2. regulatory agencies and/or ministries
CEPT and ECC
regulatory agencies and/or ministries
The ECC is the part of the CEPT that deals with radio spectrum.
The CEPT was founded in It has grown over the years, especially since the fall of the Iron Curtain, and now has 48 members stretching right across Europe.
It was set up at a time when operation and regulations and service provision to the public were typically undertaken by government organisations, including ministries, but that has changed and now it is focused as a club of national telecommunications and postal regulators, including ministries and agencies. It underwent a major reform in the 1980s with the creation of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute as a separate entity, and then in 1991 with the creation of the European Radiocommunications Committee (now the ECC, also dealing with some specific telecommunications issues, notably numbering), supported by a central office.

3. Permanent office of the CEPT:
ECO
Permanent office of the CEPT:
to complement and support its leadership and membership as well as possible =
The ‘5 days a week’ job
Almost all for the ECC
That permanent office is today known as the European Communications Office (ECO). We have a single office in Copenhagen,with 7 internationally-recruited staff working as technical experts, including the Director, and 6 local Danish staff who perform a variety of support finctions, both to experts and directly to our stakeholders.
We spend about 20 million DKK per year, and we are funded by 31 of the 48 CEPT countries who are members of the Convention which governs the status and rules of how the Office operates.
We publish an Annual Report, which can be downloaded at

4. What I’m going to talk about
Harmonisation
CEPT; who does what in Europe
Trends in international frequency management and harmonisation
This is what I’m going to talk about today. If the CEPT is about harmonisation, I think it is worthwhile to reflect briefly on what harmonisation is and why we do it. Then I shall talk about who does what in Europe, and then move on to talk about some current trends in spectrum management and then to consider a short selection of some of the key topics in spectrum management today.
Some present topics

5. When do we need rules of the road?
Why harmonise ?
When do we need rules of the road?
It is pretty obvious that in some situations, like the picture on the left, you need some rules to organise how we use a common space (as well as good tyres on your car!). In other situations, like the picture on the right, rules are either irrelevant, sometimes unhelpful (for example if there is a big hole in the road to the right hand side), or maybe just a contingency to help in an unusual situation, such as when a vehicle comes in the opposite direction on a road like this.

6. Benefits of international harmonisation
Economies of scale
Technical efficiency
Consumer convenience
But do we want the same rules in every country? Obviously there are many benefits if we do. Sweden changed from driving on the left to driving on the right in the 1960s. The reasons are self-evident, and the Swedes obviously thought it was worth the huge investment in time and energy to make the switch back then. They were just in time as it would be an even more difficult and expensive exercise now. Four EU Countries still drive on the left.
Even if we stay with the picture here, you can think of some examples where harmonising frequencies is going to make life better for everybody. Consumer convenience for example: You want your car door to open whichever country you are in! Likewise mobile phones or nowadays, smart phones for those of you who have them, but of course it wasn’t always like that as you crossed some borders in Europe.
Broadcasting is a very obvious example; we seem to have just about rescued the situation with the DAB. Last month I drove from Denmark to Germany to the Netherlands and then the UK, listening to DAB radio all the way. That took a long time to catch up with FM, didn’t it?
But even for applications where you have no particular interest in taking a phone or a radio across the border, economies of scale are a heavy driver for harmonisation. European countries are typically very small by world standards, and the compromises made even for allowing for driving both on the left or right of the road are an expense that manufacturers and consumers could do without.
But the third convincing argument for harmonisation is one of technical efficiency.

7. Harmonisation - technical efficiency
When different types of service use the same part of the spectrum, large amounts of land can be sterilised and then can’t be used for either type of service.
Radio waves cross borders, and the technical differences in how different services are implemented mean that where different services lie on either side of the border, you get spectrum which cannot be used for anything. Either there is too much interference coming in from the neighbouring country, or there are too many restrictions on the transmitting power back into the neighbouring country, in order to avoid interfering with its services.
In Europe in particular with its small countries and many land borders, it is essential to avoid the ‘dead space’ of sterilised spectrum either side of all our borders. The more technically similar services are, the less dead space you get.

8. Drive on the same side of the road?
Du skal køre til højre !
Ja – men til hvilken side?
Nej Boney,
det gjerer jeg ikkje!
So if a few countries in Europe still find it too expensive to go with a harmonised approach and just drive on the right, why couldn’t we settle this all at the start, when we invented the car?
Of course the convention for which side of the road you drive on predates the car. But in Europe it seems that the critical factor of difference is the time at which fast postal wagons started, and the technical configuration of the postillion, the set of horses and their attachment to the carriage with its passengers and postal cargo.
In France, the rider would sit on a horse. Because most people are right-handed, it is easier to get on the horse from the left. Once upon the horse, it is better to stay to the right of the road, so you are better able to manage against oncoming traffic if that is also on the right. Hence the convention. But in Central Europe, for example Hungary (and, I suppose in the UK), the rider sits on the carriage, and needs to sit to the right so that the horse whip does not hit the passengers. Therefore, the logic leads you to a convention of driving on the left.
We all know about Napoleon Bonaparte’s approach to European harmonisation. Even if you can force agreement, it still costs money to implement. So what this all tells us is that in the world of harmonisation:
1) there is a reason for everything,
2) legacy issues have to be dealt with but respected, and
3) politics is an ever present companion on the journey to a better world.
(Acknowledgement to ”Storiesnow.com” for the picture of Napoleon Bonaparte)

9. Early wireless....
The first significant use of radio communications was for maritime communications. Its role in the Titanic disaster in 1912 gave it particular prominence.
Right from the start, it was obvious that a system of regulation was needed to avoid the chaos of interference to make this new technology work for everyone’s benefit.
As early as 1902, the Berlin Convention set a framework for maritime communications.
In the 1920s, the advent of radio broadcasting brought radiocommunications into the lives of everyone in a very tangible way. And other services also started.
By the mid-20s, users of radio services realised that a more comprehensive regulatory framework was needed because of the different operational and technical requirements that each service had.

10. Disorganised chaos becomes organised efficiency
Bands allocated to different services
Fixed,
Maritime
Aeronautical,
Mobile,
Broadcasting
Amateur,
Experimental
Fortunately, because of the large geographical footprint of the earliest services; maritime and broadcasting, regulation was organised at a truly worldwide level. In 1927 International Radio Telegraph conference allocated different frequency bands to different services. In part this was a reflection of the different operational management of the services and the simplification that could be achieved by delegation to the regulators of these services. But more fundamentally, the division by service was a recognition that the different services had radically different technical characteristics, and therefore management of different bands with different characteristics would be more technically efficient.
1927: International Radiotelegraph Conference
(Washington DC, USA)

11. Frequency regulators busy harmonising.......
..still at it in
The 1927 conference was the first of many.
1947 saw the creation of the ITU, giving a permanent, ongoing and worldwide basis to the top-level of radio communications spectrum management
The most recent ITU World Radio Conference was held this year; and you will be hearing more about that later in today’s seminar.
...and in 2012

12. Three main players in spectrum regulation in Europe
ECC:
Spectrum allocation and technical conditions for its use
48 member countries acting together
Technical expertise used by EC
European Commission:
Single market issues
Binding regulations through ‘comitology’ procedures with MS
ETSI:
Equipment and system specifications: including ‘spectrum use’ characteristics
Recognised standards body for ‘harmonised standards’
Makes ‘System Reference Documents’ which inform and trigger much of the ECC work
Largely industry-driven; ‘bottom up’
But the world is too big a place to manage a greater degree of harmonisation. That, and the politico-economic forces at work over the last hundred years have led to different parts of the world grouping on a regional basis as an additional layer to the ITU . ITU recognises the CEPT as the regional organisation for Europe.
There are now three players in spectrum regulation in Europe. Earlier I referred to the creation of ETSI as a separate and independent standards body from the CEPT. This paralleled the breakup of the old government telecommunications monopoly providers and the establishment of national regulators on the one hand, and an industry of service and equipment providers on the other. So the respective competence of the ECC and ETSI is well established. Radiocommunications is only a part of ETSI’s business, but of course it is the part that we in the ECC care about.
As we see it, there are two particularly significant responsibilities for ETSI. One is that it brings many of the items of work onto the ECC’s agenda, by defining requirements that equipment and services should use. This also identifies the extent of demand: how much spectrum may be needed and under what conditions. The other is that the harmonised standards that it develops are taken as a reference for determining whether spectrum using equipment placed on the market in the European Economic Area is compliant with the EU’s framework requirements known as the ’RTTE’ Directive.
The European Commission is now a well-established and crucial player as well. In recent years we have developed a more stable relationship and put into practice our mutual understanding of respective roles and competences. The Commission has a clearly defined remit relating to the European single market, and a framework for applying binding regulations to member states through specific procedures known as ’comitology’ (that is real “Brussels-language” which I never learned in my English classes at school).
Perhaps the most succinct way to summarise the respective competences of the ECC and the Commission is that Commission rules are binding, whereas ECC rules are voluntary, typically wider in scope, more flexible to adjust in response to changing circumstances, and applicable over a wider geographical footprint than EC rules. Of course both organisations wish to apply rules in a consistent way, and we both work hard to avoid inconsistencies. In fact the relationship is closer than that, the Commission uses the ECC’s technical expertise to develop the technical conditions which underpin many of its regulations.
In addition there are numerous ECC regulations which do not have a parallel EC one, notably where it isn’t necessary to have binding regulation, or where the issue lies outside the scope of the Commission’s interest. Further, the ECC develops and publishes many recommendations and reports which are of value in providing a common set of guidance to industry and other users to promote harmonised approaches, but which do not need to be applied through regulation. Our aim in life is to provide a better environment for the consumer, and not to measure our success by how many rules we can make.

13. European Frequency Management Framework
2002 Radio Spectrum Decision
RSComm
RSPG
‘EU Telecomms package’:
Commission
Parliament
Council
Radio Spectrum
Policy Programme
(RSPP)
At this point I could mention a few more specific elements of the frequency management framework.
The relationship between the EC and the ECC is defined in a formal agreement of 2002, the ‘Radio Spectrum Decision’. This sets out the system whereby the Commission gives mandates to the ECC to investigate specific issues and typically to deliver ready-made technical conditions for use in EC regulation. A significant advantage of the system is that many parts of Commission proposals come to its Radio Spectrum Committee effectively representing an already developed consensus amongst Member States. This significantly speeds up the work of the Committee and avoids a polar relationship between Commission on the one hand and Member States on the other.
Since 2009, a new agreement defines a more complex arrangement at the EU level. For practical purposes, the Commission is still the main focal point for EU harmonisation issues, and this is given effect through its two committees. The Radio Spectrum Policy Group of Member States sets a policy framework for EU member states and the Commission, through the medium of opinions and reports. The Radio Spectrum Committee is run by the Commission and is the point of consultation (including voting) with Member States on specific regulations. The European Parliament is also an active player in that it defines, in agreement with the Commission and the European Council, an even higher level ‘Radio Spectrum Policy Programme’, which the Commission is then tasked to carry forward (in the expectation of Member State cooperation with what they have agreed in principle the Council of Ministers).
But a point to remember throughout all of this is that it is the national regulators and industry which are the key delivery points of spectrum services for public benefit.
ECC and ETSI have published a joint booklet explaining how it all works.
Read more at
eccetsirel/

14. Role of the ECC in Europe
Consensus and voluntary character:
flexible instrument of the national administrations
Technical expertise (2002 Radio Spectrum Decision)
EU mechanisms recognise that most regulatory responsibilities are applied at a national level (European Commission focuses on single market issues)
Range of subjects: ‘high profile’ and ‘low profile’:
…all are important
Geographical reach
Information focal point
A word more specifically about the ECC’s role in this system.
It is probably fair to say that if the ECC did not already exist, then if it were created today with European Union/EEA environment already in existence, it would look different. However its present form and role mainly reflects the significant technical and regulatory expertise which it has built up over many years. And now, we have a particular focus in delivering benefits by playing to our strengths in the present environment.
We pay attention to keeping our knowledge up to date:
- administrations routinely deal with leading-edge technology
- industry very actively participates in our committee work
- we are strengthening our links with academic institutions
We recognise that all spectrum uses are or should be significant to the wider community, and so we are willing to deal with all subjects, not just the high-profile ones.
The fact that regulatory responsibilities are applied at the national level makes it very valuable that the national regulators have an active forum for cooperation.
The wider. geographical reach of the CEPT compared with the EU is a major strength. The map on the background to this slide shows EU countries in blue, the other CEPT members in green.
The role of the ECC as a focal point for useful spectrum information is important and growing. The best-known elemengt of this is the EFIS frequency information system´; which is aimed at people who want to address a market on a European basis.

15. The European approach to ITU Cooperation with European Commission
ECC Strategic Plan
Concentrate on:
Expertise
The European approach to ITU
Cooperation with European Commission
Providing a focal point for information (EFIS etc.)
Cooperation with other bodies
Any organisation like the ECC needs to have a strategy to give its work some focus and consistency. This slide summarises our strategic plan, which has been in place for about three years now.
Three of these priorities relate to the previous slide on competences within Europe.

16. Sharing versus exclusivity Technology and application neutrality
Strong trends in international frequency management and harmonisation - principles
Auctions
Trading
Sharing versus exclusivity
Technology and application neutrality
Impact of convergence
So much for the regulatory framework. What about the trends in what we actually do? I selected five trends which have been talked about quite a lot over the last few years.

17. Sharing versus exclusivity Technology and application neutrality
Strong trends in international frequency management and harmonisation - principles
Auctions: usual for public mobile, otherwise it is uncommon; no use for some technologies and applications
Trading
Sharing versus exclusivity
Technology and application neutrality
Impact of convergence
Auctions are well established; they are more or less a standard way of allocating licensed spectrum used by commercial entities. Some commentators challenge how public policy makers selectively apply the economic principles that suit their preferred outcome. They say that a measurement of welfare is too narrow if it is only about ’how much money you have in the bank’.
As well as that more controversial point, it is a fact that some very useful welfare-maximising technologies are not susceptible to the auction mechanism because you cannot capture the economic value (e.g. transactional costs are too high and there is too much asymmetry of information, to make an economically efficient outcome). This applies to Short Range Devices, Cognitive radio, and, usually, spectrum sharing in general.

18. Sharing versus exclusivity Technology and application neutrality
Strong trends in international frequency management and harmonisation - principles
Auctions: usual for public mobile, otherwise it is uncommon; no use for some technologies and applications
Trading: only ‘big stuff’: no interest for general management/change of use
Sharing versus exclusivity
Technology and application neutrality
Impact of convergence
A few years ago I recruited a colleague within the UK administration. He had been working on the spectrum trading desk and the main reason he wanted a job with me is because his job was too boring; there was absolutely nothing to do! Of course the reasons are several as to why trading has not taken off as a widespread mechanism for efficient spectrum allocation. That there are specific areas where trading is significant. However this tends to be between very big players doing similar things in the same marketplace. Rather than as a means of changing from one type of spectrum use to another; people still seem to want regulators to do that for them..
The big high-profile trades are very much a feature of big markets, and are typically seen in the public mobile industry. For example the development of holdings in the US by Verizon and AT&T has led to very close attention from the FCC to competition issues in brokering ’pro-competition ‘remedial measures. You can’t afford to be doing too much of that sort of thing if the cost of regulation is to be kept at a reasonable and an enabling level.

19. Sharing versus exclusivity: regulators versus ‘big’ industry?
Strong trends in international frequency management and harmonisation - principles
Auctions: usual for public mobile, otherwise it is uncommon; no use for some technologies and applications
Trading: only ‘big stuff’: no interest for general management/change of use
Sharing versus exclusivity: regulators versus ‘big’ industry?
Technology and application neutrality
Impact of convergence
You could have a whole seminar about the merits of spectrum sharing and spectrum exclusivity. And if you are sufficiently selective in your examples you can make a case in either direction. But as a general principle, spectrum these days is so crowded, and legacy issues can be so difficult to deal with, that a lot of attention is given to how different services share the same piece of spectrum rather than how you can clear out one use in favour of another. There is no virgin territory any more, especially when we are looking for wide bandwidths.
Most of our work in the ECC is about sharing between services. A recent example is with the 3.4 – 3.8 GHz range now designated for mobile broadband; that is mobile broadband but not exclusively mobile broadband. The sharing issues are about avoiding interference to the relatively sparsely deployed existing services; so we don’t have to spend a long time finding an alternative home for those sparsely deployed services before we do anything for mobile broadband. By contrast the interest in TV broadcast ‘white spaces’ in the UHF TV is aimed at using an unavoidable residual opportunity within TV spectrum planning; in fact every service has such a residual opportunity, it is simply that the available holes in TV coverage are larger geographically than for most other services. And then we have ultra-wideband, which has its uses but really hasn’t taken off in a big way.
By contrast, the conventional mobile model is efficiently planned but, largely because of that, doesn’t lend itself to sharing. Exclusivity is sought by most spectrum users for various reasons, usually just the avoidance of risk over which they feel they have no or insufficient control. Sometimes the reasons are less sympathetic, based on anti-competitive behaviour. Later on I shall talk about short-range devices, where this tension between sharing and exclusivity is a current theme.

20. Sharing versus exclusivity: regulators versus ‘big’ industry?
Strong trends in international frequency management and harmonisation - principles
Auctions: usual for public mobile, otherwise it is uncommon; no use for some technologies and applications
Trading: only ‘big stuff’: no interest for general management/change of use
Sharing versus exclusivity: regulators versus ‘big’ industry?
Technology and application neutrality: 1927 revisited?
Impact of convergence
Technology and application neutrality is a fashionable orthodoxy, and for good reason. Applying a very system- and service- specific set of spectrum allocations has given us some very good outcomes in the past. The GSM phone is a great example often used to justify a top-down centralist approach. Further back the achievement of television we can all watch relied on knowing that the heavy investment you as a member of the public made in a TV set would pay off by having a long equipment lifetime and a good usable service where you could watch all the (few) available channels
But then we had the experience of top-down allocations that were never taken up and which wasted spectrum (often involving satellites!), the inordinate time it could take to change things at a pace way behind the pace of innovation and technical development. So as pectrum managers we have learned to step back and try to regulate only what we need to regulate in the interests of using the spectrum efficiently. And there is certainly a trade-off here; a technically specific frequency plan can give you more on paper than a more generic one based on technologically neutral conditions. But we like to think we are learning how to apply this trade-off in the optimum way. Perhaps we should look back at the reasons for harmonisation in the 1927 conference. It was mainly to try and get services with similar technical characteristics groups into the same part of the spectrum, and that is more or less where we are today. There is no intrinsic reason for different services not to share the same part of the spectrum. And there is nothing in the radio regulations which expressly forbids it; perhaps it’s a bit like reading the Bible and trying to interpret it.
And that brings us to convergence.

21. Sharing versus exclusivity: regulators versus ‘big’ industry?
Strong trends in international frequency management and harmonisation - principles
Auctions: usual for public mobile, otherwise it is uncommon; no use for some technologies and applications
Trading: only ‘big stuff’: no interest for general management/change of use
Sharing versus exclusivity: regulators versus ‘big’ industry?
Technology and application neutrality: 1927 revisited?
Impact of convergence: influence, not revolution
One of the drivers for technology and application neutrality is a recognition that different services can use common technologies to provide them, and that different technologies can provide the same service; that is convergence.
Right now in the world of spectrum management, the impact of convergence seems to be felt in a greater expectation of wireless as a medium for access and competition for broadband services. Although most people understand the subject well, there is some confusion between the role of spectrum as a competitive platform for general broadband connectivity, and its more general role for providing mobile broadband with the emphasis on the mobile.
In broadcasting the role of convergence is probably overstated, in my opinion. There is some impact of IPTV in reducing the demand for conventional direct to home broadcast technologies, but the main driver for asking serious questions about the future of UHF frequencies is the availability of alternative platforms (i.e. other technological development), namely cable and satellite.
Another example is the developing assumption that the future of some public emergency service systems (PPDR) will be based on based on LTE public mobile broadband technology. But that is a technological, not an organisational issue. It is the same principle that led to the adoption of GSM as a core technology for railway communications , already some years ago.
Conclusion: convergence is an influence, not a revolution.

22. Laissez faire versus intervention Legal risk aversion
Behavioural issues
Laissez faire versus intervention
Legal risk aversion
Media and public perception
Problems: ”it’s all your fault, not mine”
”Radio waves are making me ill”.
Here’s a quick note about some behaviour which influences outcomes in spectrum management.
It is now quite a long time since regulators tried to move away from a command and control interventionist approach to one which required them to step back and as far as possible allow market mechanisms to improve spectrum efficiency and consumer benefit. Although we will never go back to the era of command and control, the pendulum has swung back to some extent as governments and policymakers try to respond to public demand to deliver the wanted outcomes and to avoid the unwanted ones.
Some deeper thinking and the benefit of experience is teaching us more about what works and what doesn’t in practice. There is also a strong wish now by governments to invest in infrastructure and to try to use telecommunications and broadband in particular as an engine for economic recovery and this tends to raise the level of government interest.
Regulators are risk averse for good reasons, but the large financial interests, especially costs sunk into expensive spectrum auctions and infrastructure already, has tended to make market players more legally aggressive (or defensive depending on where you’re coming from). Sometimes it is caution, sometimes it is the unavoidable response to legal challenge which has led to some delays in releasing 4G spectrum in some countries.
I won’t say much about media and public perception, other than to note that the attention given by media to certain issues that management is correlated with public impact, but it doesn’t always follow that the most important issues get the most attention. The spectrum requirements of earth sensing satellites may not get much media attention, but the science of global warming certainly does.
Plans to introduce 4G LTE technology in the band adjacent to terrestrial TV, and co-channel with some cable TV, and adjacent channel to some railway signalling frequencies, have all shown a potential for interference to occur, including some post-deployment cases. In those circumstances everyone tends to blame everyone else, and this highlights both the necessity of good harmonisation measures, and their limitations. A good harmonised plan for using frequencies does not guarantee that there is never any interference. The measures to control interference depend upon the national regulator’s policy and the processes of planning and implementation applied by the various operators. Equipment and systems may work well with, for example, lower quality receivers and less filtering with an existing service in the adjacent frequency band, but new systems may be more spectrally efficient, but depend upon their spectral neighbours using better standards of equipment and more coordination in network planning.
As for the radio waves and the health impacts, this is another large subject in itself, but a mention of what concerns the public is not complete without this on the list. The balance of scientific study tends to reduce concerns, and perhaps the most dangerous aspect is the impact of fear of electromagnetic radiation rather from the radio waves themselves.

23. Culture and context differ, but trends very similar,
Outside Europe
Culture and context differ, but trends very similar,
led by technological opportunity and consumer demand
Emergence of new regional blocs:
Latin America, Africa, Arab
USA innovative with regulation; remains very structured
Asia Pacific a very disparate region, but APT is dynamic
work more based around the ITU framework
big world players: China, Japan, India;
all very different from each other
The ECC pays a lot of attention to its liaisons with other regions of the world, especially the North Americas and the Asia-Pacific region. The world is a diverse place geographically and culturally, and this conditions the dynamics of how countries cooperate with each other, and the detail of many of the solutions. However the overwhelming impression we get is that although other parts of the world may not harmonise as tightly as Europe, the issues and challenges on the table are very much the same. And certainly the tools at the regulators’ disposal and the way they are used is very similar across most parts of the world these days.

24. ECC Strategic Plan – priority topics
Concentrate on:
Digital dividend
Cognitive radio
Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR)
Innovation above 40 MHz
Numbering and naming
Improve its own working processes
So what are today’s hot topics? We can look at a few lists from different places and see what it tells us.
ECC’s strategic plan, dating from 2010, includes three items (the first three in the list) which received quite a lot of media attention, at least in the specialist press and on the seminar circuits. The fourth, on innovation, is also very important even if it is lower key. ECC is active in some areas which have a good prospect of public impact, e.g. radars in the 77 to 79 GHz range, including automobile anticollision radar.
I should mention in passing numbering and maiming, which is not about spectrum, but about the numbering systems in telecommunications networks.

25. Digital dividend Cognitive radio Broadcasting Short Range Devices
ECC website topics
Digital dividend
Cognitive radio
Broadcasting
Short Range Devices
Numbering and naming
If you then look at our website the list of front-page topics is similar, but reflects more what we think the public wants to know about. The main difference here is that we include broadcasting, a very big subject but these days the area of interest is more about managing the exit of broadcasting from UHF; how far and how fast. And we include short-range devices because these are very progressive in a vital part of our lives.

26. Radio Spectrum Policy Programme – Main Topics
Mobile broadband
Spectrum Inventory
Public protection and disaster relief (internal market)
Electricty production and distribution (Green...)
Wireless microphones and cameras
Foster different modes of spectrum sharing
Spectrum Trading (where flexible use available)
The list of topics from the European Union’s RSPP is very interesting. Mobile broadband is predictably top of the list. Then comes the plan to build up the spectrum inventory to identify parts of the spectrum which are not being used fully. This is principally where allocations are made which are not taken up very enthusiastically, as well as spectrum which is used less efficiently than other parts of spectrum because of the inefficiencies of old technology compared with new ones. The inventory concept is very simple and has achieved widespread high-level support, however when it comes to implementation I hear a significant degree of scepticism about the practicality of the initiative and it added value, in other words it will lead to good conclusions, but not conclusions which differ from what spectrum managers already know. We shall see how this works in practice; the ECO is working hard to contribute to the Commission’s development of an inventory. This is particularly efficient give the ECO’s existing role in spectrum information gathering.
Green energy is another interesting item to include. It may not be a huge use of spectrum, but its impact could be very big as we seek to combat climate change.

27. Some topics with big public impact
Mobile broadband
Broadcasting
Cognitive radio
Public protection and disaster relief
Short range devices
So I shall just have a quick reflection on five of these ‘hot’ topics.

28. ECC addreses big public topics
Mobile broadband - ECC PT1 (and WG FM) very busy
Broadcasting - ‘PMSE’ only live topic
Cognitive radio – WG FM Correspondence group; SE43
Public protection and disaster relief – FM49
Short range devices – SRD-MG
All five of these topics are being considered in some detail by the ECC, with a mission to provide practical technical background and allocation plans.

29. Hard facts – the growth of mobile broadband
Mobile broadband seems to come top of most people’s lists. It used to be the digital dividend but that is now morphed into a wider agenda.
There are a lot of graphs like this one, which comes from the ECC’s project team PT1. You can have a vigourous debate about the future shape of this curve and where ultimately the level of demand will plateau. Equally you can have a vigourous debate about the solutions to this rapidly rising demand; to what extent it’s the mobile parts and what extent it’s the broadband part, what is the role of so-called offloading (using Wi-Fi for mobile device connectivity) and so on. But what you cannot deny is that we see a very strong positive trend and a natural desire by regulators to seek to meet it.
Source: internal PT1 report, Sept 2011
Feb 2008
Jul 2009
Nov 2010

30. Harmonised bands for mobile broadband
800 MHz Digital Dividend up to MHz
900MHz GSM -> ECS Band MHz
1800MHz GSM -> ECS band MHz
2100 MHz IMT (-> ECS) MHz
2600 MHz IMT (->ECS) MHz
BWA -> mobile MHz
So what is the best way to meet thios demand? As we’ve found in our earlier reflection on harmonisation, with different countries driving on different sides of the road, you can never start with a clean sheet of paper. Comparing the RSPP’s requirement to European member states to find 1200 MHz of bandwidth, with what we have available, we see there is already notionally over 1000 MHz. However, much of this is already taken with an incumbent use,so it has to be gradually replaced over time. There is also the inescapable truth with any spectrum application that if you want high bandwidth you need to move to high frequencies. You cannot have low frequencies and high-capacity; however what we’re looking for is a best fit, taking into account where people want to use mobile broadband and what they actually want to use it for. Yes, you can make a theoretical case that everybody on the tram and bus is streaming high bandwidth high-definition video from YouTube on an individual basis, but in reality it isn’t going to happen, neither on the demand nor the supply side.
RSPP: ”find 1200 MHz bandwidth”

31. 1 in 5 viewers still use Terrestrial TV
Broadcasting
1 in 5 viewers still use Terrestrial TV
in Norway..or is that ‘only’ 20%?
Turning now to broadcasting, the days when everyone watched over the air television carried on UHF frequencies, and nothing else, have gone.
Even the UK, traditionally a largely terrestrial TV-based country, only uses the medium for about 50% of TV watching.
So mobile broadband, as well as eventually taking over the 900 MHz frequencies currently used GSM, and then the 800 MHz digital dividend frequencies, is clearly staking a claim for more. Inevitably a lot of discussion focuses on another tranche at 700 MHz. But is this salami approach the best one? There is a strong case for looking at the whole band and recognising that different countries are scaling down terrestrial TV on UHF at different rates and at different points in the process. Every time there is a major replanning of the TV brands there is a lot of uncertainty and a lot of expense to implement it; so there is more than one approach to debate in this arena.
Many more people these days, especially the younger generation, are looking to the Internet and their computers to provide video entertainment on traditional broadcast and new broadcast models. However demand for traditional linear TV remains robust and that is not going to disappear any time soon, but the media over which it has watched is certainly changing.
How do you eat salami ?
Radio – going digital but no revolution

32. ECC workshop, Mainz May 2012, concluded:
Cognitive Radio
ECC workshop, Mainz May 2012, concluded:
Large interest and commitment
More regulatory work needed for geolocation
(harmonised approach needed)
Geolocation feasible – more regulatory work needed:
(‘keep it simple’)
Business model still uncertain, but it will emerge
Divided opinion on ‘general’ v. ‘specific scenario’ regulation
Main applications all seem to have cheaper alternatives, but this is quite likely to change
- localised Wi-Fi; M2M; rural broadband
Cognitive radio has developed a lot of excitement for a number of years now.
Some had visions of a magical world of the future where radios could work everything out for themselves based on software and we wouldn’t need regulators any more. Perhaps the vision was founded more out of a dislike of regulators than of achieving practical outcomes for the public.
However a lot of work by research institutions, industry and now the ECC is bringing us to a point where cognitive radio is looking a far more practical option, albeit with some challenges. This is based mainly on the geolocation approach, where devices have the intelligence to know where they are (thanks to GPS) and to receive information from a database telling them what they can do without interfering with anyone.
Our recent workshop in Mainz showed that the technology is maturing and is simply waiting for the opportunity for a business model to take root; that will require alternatives to cognitive solutions to become more expensive, driven by increasing frequency congestion and limited opportunity in the conventional space.

33. Public protection and disaster relief
For predictable events and unpredictable ones
TETRA established for PPDR in Europe, typically ‘narrrow band for voice and some data’
New requirement is for wideband access for ‘video from the scene’, and local LANs ‘at the scene’
Recognised requirement in RSPP
Within our industry PPDR is an application with a lot of weight behind it. More general public interest is only raised at times of crisis, when something bad happens. And especially this attention is given in the inevitable public enquiry which comes after a major disaster.
The reality is that much of the driver for new frequencies of PPDR, and of course this should be harmonised, is driven by the validity to bring high-quality video signals from the scene of interest through to expert analysts who are remote from the action. This could be particularly useful in giving frontline medical advice.

34. Mobile broadband is about more than UHF...
UHF frequencies
Mobile broadband is about more than UHF...
Cognitive Radio is about more than UHF
Broadcasting is about more than UHF
PPDR is about more than UHF
We’ve just looked at four issues which are each in their own right interesting and complex. Each is relevant to a range of different frequencies, but a uniting feature of all of them is that they all want to use the prized ranges in UHF more than they want to use anything else. And all of this makes the strategic approach to the use of UHF spectrum the hottest single topic in spectrum management today.
But in spectrum politics, UHF is the big issue

35. Main trends in 5th review of EC Decision:
Short range devices
Main trends in 5th review of EC Decision:
Old arrangement – many narrow frequency blocks
New arrangements – more emphasis on wider, more generic blocks, with similar technical characteristics
Make more use of low latency
Primitive ‘cognitive’ elements – notably location databases
And now, to finish, a quick word about short range devices.
These are the little heroes of the radio spectrum which have a massive public impact. Where would we be today without Wi-Fi? And a whole host of other applications from retail stock control through to a range of life-saving and life enhancing medical applications.
We’re changing the way we do this, but we are changing it subtly. Over a number of years new specialist applications have tended to be given their own very narrow frequency range effectively for the exclusive use. This has resulted in a high degree of security for the manufacturers of the relevant devices and their users. However it is very inefficient; you can end up with a low density of use of spectrum and quite a lot of waste. In the worst cases it can also give incumbent manufacturers a competitive advantage by having conditions which are optimised for their own system design and not that of new entrants to the market.
So we’re now trying to define a smaller number of more generic usage categories defined by groups of similar technical characteristics. This requires a skilful estimation of how these devices are all used in practice, to ensure that the probability of interference, and the consequences, remain acceptably low.

36. Participating in ECC work: where to start
I said a few times in this talk that ECC strongly values the contribution made by its industrial partners. This is an essential part of delivering outcomes of value to the public, and making sure that we base our conclusions on as well-informed a basis as possible. This picture shows where on our website you can find more information about participating in our work.

37. Harmonisation: necessary but not so simple
What we’ve covered
CEPT, ECC and ECO
Harmonisation: necessary but not so simple
Europe: the roles of ECC, ETSI and the EC
Trends in Spectrum management: principles
Trends in spectrum management: behaviour
Outside Europe: more similarities than differences
Some ‘big’ topics; feeding the iPhones and much more