Connecting the World

Frequency Harmonisation

Global harmonisation of spectrum bands and standards across the GSM family of technologies has been a fundamental factor behind the success of the mobile telecommunications industry.

Benefits including economies of scale, international roaming and interoperability are now so ingrained that they are taken for granted, but all rely on the existence of open standards and unified spectrum bands.

Technology bias
Governments and regulators should be aware of the variety of ways in which technology bias can be introduced, for example in specifying minimum data rates or allocating frequencies in amounts of bandwidth and channel definitions that exclude certain technologies.

Recommendations
The GSMA recommends that regulators should closely examine their policies regarding technology neutrality and ensure that opportunities for bias are eliminated and harmonisation achieved.
There are significant economies of scale to be had in the production of terminals with internationally identified common frequency bands.
Without the identification of common bands, handset costs could be set prohibitively high, and the effect will be a significant reduction in the take-up of any mobile service. This will harm not only consumers and industry directly, but also the benefits that mobile offers to economies as a vital infrastructure.

Harmonisation – the industry view

  • Bands need to be harmonised as widely as possible across Europe
  • The CEPT mandate on 790-862 MHz is a good start (but not binding)
  • Ideally the industry would like some form of binding measure but this looks unlikely in the short term
  • The important thing is to get countries to agree on a common band in the next 12 to 18 months – based on 790-862 MHz initially
  • In the longer term 750-862 MHz should be considered
  • EU Communication (Nov 07) and Parliament (Toia report) are important but can't lead to binding measures – only countries can do that now
  • There is an important role for the European Commission in bringing stakeholders up to a "common understanding" via its "Exploiting the Digital Dividend" study commencing in October 08

Why we need clarity

  • Mobile is an industry with long payback periods on investments and needs to make significantly larger upfront investments than most other industries
  • Various frequency bands (900,1800, 2100, 2500/2600 MHz) are linked and it is hard to make investment decisions on one without knowing what will happen with the others
  • A service is offered using not just one band but multiple ones
  • The industry is also facing large scale migration in some of these bands from voice to data, or from 3G to 3.5
  • Piecemeal and delayed decisions on UHF could adversely affect investment decisions on the others
  • EU consumers and international competitiveness could lose out if inefficient investment decisions are taken
  • The current international credit climate does not help this situation

Economies of scale in handset production: