Victory for US: 700MHz allocated for mobile services

Stuart Corner
Sunday, 18 November 2007 09:51

IT Industry - Strategy

The United States has scored a significant victory at the World Radio Communications Conference (WRC-07) in Geneva which has agreed to allocate the 700MHz band (698-862MHz) to mobile services in many parts of the world. The United States is transitioning from analogue to digital television in 2009, leaving the analogue 700MHz frequency available for an auction to new service providers, and the US delegation to WRC-07 proposed that this band be identified globally for international mobile telecommunications services (IMT) to boost the market and the spectrum available for advanced wireless services. (This is the auction in which Google has expressed great interest, generating much speculation about the behemoth's intentions).

In the run up to WRC-07 the leader of the US delegation, Richard Russell, deputy director for technology in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said: "We believe fundamentally that by identifying 700MHz for IMT, everyone wins."

Commenting on the outcome, he was reported as saying: "This conference has helped create a much larger market for wireless broadband technologies and services. Because we now have a very broad swath of spectrum available around the world both on a global and regional basis for wireless broadband technologies, the market for these technologies and services has been enhanced. There is much more certainty today … than there was before the conference started."

However the US victory has not been outright. The band has been allocated for IMT in Region 2 - (North, Central and South Americas) and nine countries of Region 3 (major markets in Asia including China, India, South Korea and Japan). In Europe and other parts of the world the move was blocked and instead the band 790-862 MHz has been allocated to IMT services, but not until 2015.