C-Band Sharing Remains Sensitive Issue Between Mobile, Satellite Industries Leading Up to WRC-15

Freeing up more spectrum for mobile use is critical, said Herman Schepers, senior director-Global Spectrum Campaign at Groupe Speciale Mobile Association (GSMA). Data traffic is growing very fast and already exploding, he said. The group is working with the mobile community, and speaking to governments and regulators around the world about their business case and to “make sure that people understand how data usage is growing,” he said.

Ericsson wants the wireless industry to have harmonized spectrum as a result of WRC-15, said Ven Sampath, director-regulatory affairs and standards policy at Ericsson. “We’re trying to get bands between 470 MHz and 6.4 GHz,” he said. “This spectrum is extremely crowded.” A portion of it used extensively by broadcasters in the U.S. and Canada is being considered for allocation to mobile services, he said. But other countries may not follow suit and that can cause restrictions, he said: “Harmonization is one of our biggest concerns.”

NTIA is working with the FCC and the State Department to finalize U.S. proposals for the conference, an NTIA official said. The agency is continuing its bilateral and multilateral negotiations through ITU-related meetings and participation at the Inter-American Telecommunication Commission, he said. It's assessing increased spectrum sharing and "we are working with companies to find suitable places where that sharing can take place," he said. NTIA has specific proposals for WRC-15 to look at more spectrum for terrestrial mobile broadband, satellite and space science services, he said.

The mobile community, or the international mobile telecommunications (IMT) industry, has claimed that sharing spectrum in the C band and other frequencies is necessary and can be done, a concept that the satellite industry continues to oppose. The C band is “indispensable and irreplaceable for satellite industry user groups,” and it can't be shared, said David Hartshorn, secretary general of the Global VSAT Forum. This was previously demonstrated when studies were conducted for WRC in 2007 on WiMax, he said. “Exclusion zone requirements were the only way to contain or prevent the interference and they were so large, making it impractical for roll out,” he said. The new systems from the wireless industry have also shown to interfere, he said. Large exclusions will be required and they’re designed to be mobile and ubiquitous, he said. “They’ll be moving around and unmanageable in terms of interference prevention.” The spectrum sharing aspect of the issue is shaping up in the same way as in 2007, “but even more convincingly because of the mobility aspect of new wireless devices which are going to be unmanageable,” Hartshorn said.

The consensus in the satellite industry is that there shouldn’t be a designation for IMT in the C band from 3400 MHz-4200 MHz at WRC-15, said Sam Black, Satellite Industry Association acting president. This position is supported by satellite operators in the U.S and in all the major regions of the world, he said. “We’re hopeful this is going to be successful because of the heavy reliance on C band around the world” and the services that are used by companies to support cell networks, media distribution and other critical services, he said.

The satellite industry already shares frequencies with other services, like fixed services and military operations, Black said. But “sharing doesn’t mean the same thing in every case,” he said. SIA is open to looking at proposals on sharing, but “we need to have firm technical proposals so we can do analysis and figure out if there’s an opportunity to make something work,” he said. “Not every service can be shared with every other service.”

The agenda item 1.1 says there’s a significant need for more spectrum, 4G Americas President Chris Pearson said, referring to the WRC-15 item that addresses spectrum allocation. Pearson stressed that there’s more exclusive-use licensed spectrum that’s needed for mobile operators throughout the Americas. But it’s “realistic and pragmatic” to understand that there is a limited amount of spectrum that is easily available for such use, he said. A 4G Americas report last week (http://bit.ly/1FEf2Ag) cited ways to move forward with spectrum sharing, which should be a discussion point in the industry and at WRC, he said.

A GSMA report this year assessed which spectrum bands, including the C band, will be critical and can be harmonized (http://bit.ly/1FEder0). The bands were selected because “we think the sharing is feasible,” said Roberto Ercole, GSMA senior director-long-term spectrum. Bands where satellite services use uplink are very sensitive, he said. But other bands mainly used for flight navigation radar can be shared, he said. The satellite and mobile communities have different objectives, Sampath said. “The satellite community would like to hold on to the spectrum that it currently has, and the mobile community says the spectrum is extremely crowded and would like to have the 3.4-3.7 GHz band reallocated to it,” he said.

The industries remain at odds over the methodology used by the ITU’s spectrum speculator tool to determine that about 1960 MHz should be cleared for worldwide use of IMT services by 2020 (see 1404080039). “If you look at how data traffic has been growing in the last few years, between 2008 and 2013, data traffic grew 45 times,” said Schepers. This is expected to continue and grow exponentially, he said. The methodology has been approved and has been around a long time, said Ercole. Operators need more spectrum to cope with the huge growth in mobile broadband, he said. “They want to make sure in the future they can offer these services in a cost-effective way to their consumers. ... That’s why so much time was devoted to looking at these spectrum requirements,” he added.

The population and location assumptions used in the tool “bear no resemblance to reality” and the wireless industry “is unflinchingly holding to a position that they must have the amount of spectrum called for in the output,” Hartshorn said. At least 30 percent of spectrum allocated to the wireless industry is unused, he said, referring to a report by LS Telecom (http://bit.ly/1tcBwEl). This calls into question that industry’s attempt “to take spectrum that is the lifeblood for key applications running today in every major region,” he said.

The results of the ITU-Radiocommunication (ITU-R) studies that estimate the global spectrum requirements for IMT for the year 2020 have been confirmed, an ITU spokesman emailed. ITU-R groups are finalizing preparatory studies on the different WRC-15 agenda items, he said. A Conference Preparatory Meeting will be held in March, and the CPM Report to WRC-15 is expected to contain possible solutions to address the agenda items that will be further considered by ITU member states in preparing their proposals, he said.