Views on user and market needs for the next decade

A decade of constant growth

Mobile communications are the major contributor to the growth of the telecommunications industry as a whole and one of the most dynamic sectors of the world’s economy. Mobiles have become one of the goods with the fastest diffusion in our societies improving everyday life and contributing to strengthen social links. During the last 15 years revolution of usages have occurred and mobile is now a unique communication device for all social categories. Mobile is also considered as an essential tool to improve the personal security.

Impact on spectrum demand

Growing multimedia usage and evolution of technology have strong impact on spectrum needs. Better performance means more usage e.g. mobile TV and video on demand develop when technology improves. Currently more than 60 TV stations are offered on mobile by Orange France. Furthermore users want to have access to the same services in the entire territory including sparsely populated areas. Mobile coverage of rural areas is a political priority in a number of countries where mobile phones have turned into a mass market product.

However, IMT-2000 remains to be introduced in many markets including the largest developing countries where no 3G license has been granted yet. In these markets, the introduction will be facilitated by the availability of the appropriate frequency spectrum in the lower bands. A cost-effective extension of mobile coverage could be possible thanks to the digital dividend which is evaluated to be around 112 MHz.

Lower frequency bands offer longer-range radio wave propagation characteristics than higher frequency bands and therefore would allow operators to extend UMTS/IMT-2000 network coverage to large areas with a reduced number of base station sites. This leads to lower network investment costs especially in areas with little user density where the revenues are small.

Mobile market growth continues to be strong and is expected to keep on in years 2015-2020. WRC-07 is the right time to identify not only spectrum below 1 GHz but also new spectrum for mobile high-data rate broadband use in the bands below 5 GHz. The principle of inter-operability and compatibility between IMT-2000 and its evolutions should be taken into account when developing new radio interfaces for public mobile systems.

Mobile applications and services demanding high data-rate access, with foreseen data volumes and 100 Mbps/1 Gbps peak data-rates, cannot perform satisfactorily within today’s IMT-2000 spectrum due to the demand for increased traffic handling and due to the larger bandwidth requirements for new technologies.

Expected results at WRC-07

Two Agenda Items are of main importance for the mobile industry at WRC-07, namely A.I. 1.4 and A.I. 1.9. The agenda item 1.4 refers to the extended IMT-2000 coverage needs in the bands below those already identified for IMT-2000 and the high-bitrate services needs in other bands for the future evolution of IMT-2000 and IMT-Advanced.

Coverage needs:

We expect that WRC-07 will allocate the whole 470-862 MHz band to the Mobile Service on a co-primary basis in all three ITU Regions and will identify globally a harmonised sub-band of around 100 MHz for IMT.

Advanced services needs:

WRC-07 should identify new spectrum, preferably the 3.4-4.2 GHz band, for advanced high-bit-rate services with a new radio interface requiring large channelling. The 2.7-2.9 GHz band is also a good candidate band since is near the band already identified for IMT-2000 and present similar propagation conditions.

The 3.4-4.2 GHz band offers the best potential for identification for IMT at WRC-07 due to its  size and relatively better propagation characteristics for mobile and in-building applications, in comparison with other higher frequency candidate bands. This band would accommodate IMT-Advanced systems which are envisaged with large bandwidth and would provide significant capacity. It is feasible to share the band between IMT-Advanced, in the cities of the most developed countries, and the FSS usage in the others areas.

We hope that CITEL Administrations will support identification for IMT at WRC-07 of:

• a harmonised sub-band within 470-862 MHz to improve coverage and

• enough spectrum below 5 GHz on a global basis to ensure development of future advanced  mobile services.

Halina Uryga
Deputy Director Spectrum
Orange