Some European 790-862 MHz Coordination Concerns Focus On Asian Countries
GENEVA -- European consensus is beginning to form around the idea of a new mechanism to identify counties that need to coordinate with the 120 nations that negotiated the 2006 digital radio and TV frequency plan for Europe, Africa and the Middle East, ITU-R participants said. Proposals supporting and opposing the idea were made to an ITU-R group preparing studies for the 2011 World Radiocommunication Conference agenda item 1.17 on sharing the 790-862 MHz band in most of the world except the Americas.
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The 2006 Regional Radiocommunication Conference agreement has the necessary regulatory mechanisms and coordination procedures for countries to protect the broadcasting service from the mobile service in a neighboring country, France said in a submission. The document was discussed and approved in the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) conference preparatory group dealing with the agenda item. The procedures are used to identify countries that have to coordinate new services, a participant said.
Some changes may be needed in the radio regulations to add procedures for countries not party to the 2006 agreement, said Jean-Philippe Millet of the French National Agency for Frequencies. France is saying the same procedures could be used for countries outside the GE06 plan, a participant said. The group will discuss the matter later, a participant said.
Sweden seems “to have a simpler approach,” said an ITU-R participant familiar with the matter. Each administration has the opportunity to negotiate with neighbors about their right to spectrum access for their needs, said a Swedish document. It also was discussed and given preliminary approval by the CEPT prep group. Sweden expresses a reasonably flexible view on spectrum use as long as the spectral density proscribed in the 2006 regional agreement isn’t exceeded, said an ITU-R participant. Sweden sees no need to develop rules for the Asia region since the administrations already have bilateral and other agreements, the participant said.
New Zealand doesn’t support extending the Geneva-06 approach for evaluating the need to coordinate between administrations implementing different services in adjacent countries, it said. China doesn’t want “to completely extend the coordination approach” for Asian countries, it said. Planning for the digital terrestrial broadcasting service in Asia is much more complicated than in Europe, Africa, ex- Soviet Union countries and the Middle East, China said.
The French document reinforces the idea that the 2006 regional conference “should not have been held until the results of WRC-07 were known,” said an ITU-R participant. Some saw the 2006 conference as an effort to impose a regional view on the outcome of a superior conference, “or at best as a waste of time and resources,” he said. Some ITU-R participants in the corridors have suggested holding a future regional or sub-regional conference, he said. Africa likely wouldn’t support another conference, he said. The move also could slow rollout of services in Europe’s digital dividend, he said. No European country wants another regional planning conference, a European participant said.
Regulatory changes may be needed to protect other services from mobile services in certain countries, Millet said, referring to aeronautical radionavigation service. The 645-862 MHz band has been allocated to the aeronautical radionavigation service in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, the Russian Federation, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Poland, Kyrgyzstan, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Romania, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Ukraine, the Radio Regulations said. Sharing and compatibility should adequately protect the aeronautical radionavigation service, said a document on the preliminary CEPT position.