WRC Prep Meeting Draws Record Participation; 5G Focus Expected
A two-week, worldwide Conference Preparation Meeting (CPM) for the upcoming World Radiocommunication Conference ended in Geneva Thursday. The next step is release of a 1,000-page report expected within the next month. The CPM was a success, with a record 1,300 participants from 107 member states, ITU officials said during a news media call.
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A key focus of the WRC is expected to be IMT-2020, for international mobile telecom in 2020 and beyond, a focus starting with WRC-12. Officials said a major focus will be on the high-band spectrum now being used for 5G in the U.S. WRC meets in Egypt starting in October.
“There is no doubt that the conference will identify spectrum for 5G,” said Mario Maniewicz, deputy-director of the ITU’s Radiocommunication Bureau. “Nobody is against it. … The challenge is to identify as much as possible spectrum in a harmonized manner.”
It makes no sense to the ITU for the same band to be used differently from country to country, Maniewicz said: “The economies of scale are not going to play in your favor if you have your own frequencies for your own services.” To connect more people internationally, “it’s important to have a global harmonized use of the spectrum and a globally harmonized standard of the equipment that we are going to use,” he said.
The CPM gathers “all the different views and proposals that we have collected so far during this cycle of studies, which started in 2015,” said Conference Chairman Khalid Al-Awadhi of the United Arab Emirates. Individual nations and the six regional groups will develop proposals for the WRC based on the report, he said
“We have the list of the agenda items,” Al-Awadhi said. “We know what we are going to study during this cycle. We made the majority of the studies and all of that is included in the CPM report. And now it is just a matter of making the decisions in the conference.“ WRC work by its nature requires lots of studies and time to ensure spectrum incumbents are protected, he said.
The WRC is important because wireless is so important, Maniewicz said. “Everything is connected,” he said. “Everything will be even more connected. Everyone wants to be mobile and to be ubiquitous in their connectivity.” People want their devices to work wherever they travel, he said: “We don't want to be dealing with different standards” in every country.
At the last WRC in 2015, then-FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and other U.S. officials failed to get agreement on a worldwide approach to broadband in the TV bands. That was before the start of the U.S. TV incentive auction (see 1511050041).