HOW TO HARMONIZE PUBLIC SAFETY BANDS DEBATED AT WRC

The U.S. position has been that the ITU’s Radio Regulations shouldn’t be changed to identify spectrum for public protection and disaster relief but that administrations should be encouraged to use globally and regionally harmonized bands. The U.S. would have the ITU continue technical studies and make recommendations for technical and operational implementation for advanced solutions. “Band identification is not needed to achieve spectrum harmonization, administrations have the flexibility to designate any band for public protection and disaster relief, and thus they already may use common frequency bands for public protection and disaster relief,” the U.S. said in a position paper presented Wed. at the conference and backed by the Inter-American Telecom Commission (CITEL). Several administrations offered proposals in which certain bands would be earmarked for public protection and disaster relief (PPDR).

“It is important, in particular for small countries, to harmonize frequency bands in order to facilitate international disaster relief operations and also obtain economy of scale, by equipment standardization,” a representative of Israel said. He said his govt. sought further implementation studies and supported PPDR operating at 138-144 MHz, 148-174 MHz, 806-824 MHz and 851-869 MHz and 5850-5925 MHz. As a result of the diverging views, the working group agreed to set up an ad hoc panel to reconcile the competing positions, with 60 delegates signing on. Committee 5 Vice Chmn. Mustapha Bessi of Morocco urged participants to begin talking with each other early, echoing other committee leaders who have urged “corridor conversations” to begin right away at the conference to aid tackling of the large agenda.

A representative of Iran said his administration generally supported the principal of globally or regionally harmonizing PPDR spectrum “but at the appropriate time.” He said Iran believed there was a lack of sufficient studies on related technical and regulatory aspects and that ITU should do more research before the WRC took action. A representative of Egypt, on the other hand, urged the working group not to allow the issue to slip until the next WRC in 2007 but to make a decision now. “Although Egypt has begun a process of harmonizing frequency use, mainly in the band 380- 400 MHz, the coordination between radios of the police, fire and emergency medical services remains a problem,” Egypt said. It said it would support 851-869 MHz for harmonized PPDR use but not 380-399.9 MHz, 406.1-430 MHz or 440-470 MHz.

A common proposal submitted by the Arab administrations proposed no identification of globally or regionally harmonized bands at this WRC but invited the ITU to continue studying potential frequency bands that could be identified for disaster relief operations. The only relevant issue in that area should be addressing the spectrum needs of international disaster relief, the Arab proposal said. An Italian delegate, speaking on behalf of the Conference of European Postal & Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT), said a European common position would identify 380-470 MHz as a frequency tuning range for PPDR, letting administrations decide on a national basis how much spectrum in the band they would make available for such operations. The European proposal invited the ITU to conduct technical studies in support of additional identification of such frequency tuning ranges. WRC 2007 would consider the results of those studies when acting on additional identification of spectrum in that area, this proposal said.

An Indian delegate presented an Asian-Pacific Telecommunity (APT) proposal that said earmarking globally harmonized PPDR spectrum was “an urgent task in support of the global war on terrorism.” Without proposing that any priority be established in the ITU’s Radio Regulations for that spectrum, the APT proposal said 406.1-430 MHz, 440-470 MHz, 806-824 MHz, 851-869 MHz, 4900-4990 MHz and 5850-5925 MHz could be considered for globally harmonized spectrum.