ITU Pivoting to Hybrid Meetings as Next WRC Looms
The ITU has switched to mostly in-person meetings for its study groups and working sessions as final preparations are underway for the World Radiocommunications Conference next year, said Mario Maniewicz, director of the ITU-Radiocommunications Bureau, at the Asia-Pacific Spectrum Management Conference Tuesday. The conference itself was hybrid, with some speakers participating live in Bangkok and others, like Maniewicz, participating virtually.
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Meeting in person, with some virtual participation for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, helped promote discussion, Maniewicz said. “As we expected, discussions are much more fluid,” he said. “Exchanges among participants are much more friendly and the meeting is more productive,” he said. ITU hopes “the productivity of these meetings will increase significantly” through year-end and “we will be able to catch up” on “all the issues that are still pending,” he said.
The Asia-Pacific Telecommunity (APT) had three major virtual WRC planning meetings, said Kyu-Jin Wee, chairman of the APT Conference Preparatory Group. Asian interests will meet again in August using a hybrid format, he said. Because participants were spread across time zones, the virtual meetings have been five or six hours long, compared to eight hours for in-person meetings, he said. But virtual meetings have had almost twice as many participants as past in-person meetings, and future meetings should be hybrid “so that we give more opportunity for more … delegates to engage in the work of the preparation for the WRC,” Wee said.
The pandemic demonstrated the role wireless plays in keeping people connected, said Masanori Kondo, APT secretary-general. “A huge portion of data traffic relies on mobile networks,” he said. “Spectrum has emerged as a key and vital resource,” he said: “Managing the spectrum … is a crucial policy and regulatory” priority. The pandemic also “exposed … the digital divide in the Pacific region,” he said.
Countries across the region vary widely on their level of connectivity, said Rior Santos, senior coordination specialist in the ITU Regional Office for Asia & the Pacific. “More developed nations across the region had led the way globally in 5G deployment and are starting to take the lead in the early stages of 6G,” he said. Developing nations “are still focused on rolling out 4G or even 3G services and on connecting often large areas that still remain unconnected,” he said.
Speakers on a WRC panel predicted ongoing disagreements among industry sectors headed into the meeting, scheduled to start Nov. 20, 2023, in the United Arab Emirates.
Mobile operators in the Asia Pacific region already have numerous bands for wireless, said Bashir Patel, representing the Global Satellite Operators Association. “How much spectrum is really needed?” he said. “It begs the question. How much spectrum is also underutilized?” he said: “There is refarming of spectrum that can happen as well from 2G and 3G, which can be adopted. We need to be very mindful and balance” interests. “More mobile spectrum is not necessarily the answer,” he said.
Don’t overlook satellite's ability to compete with terrestrial 5G, Patel said. “The new generation, the new wave of very-high throughput satellites that are available … will offer much greater portability and coverage, as well as capacity and bandwidth,” he said. “Satellite is there to complement the rollout of 5G,” he said.
‘”More and more, we’re seeing our customers want to use faster mobile connectivity,” said Joe Guan, GSMA head-policy, Greater China. In many parts of Asia, wireless is the main way people connect to the internet “if not the only way,” he said. All the bands targeted for 5G are important to carriers, especially 6 GHz, he said.
“Our customers are demanding much higher quality mobile connectivity, and they want connectivity to be everywhere, anytime,” Guan said: “Our customers are now in a culture of wanting everything here and now. They don’t want to wait. They don’t want to see loading signs.” When they see the bars on their phones drop from 5G to 4G, or 4G to 3G “they get very, very upset,” he said. Mid-band is especially important for 5G in Asia, he said. “For Asia, that’s pretty much all we have,” he said. Without more mid-band the cost of deploying 5G will “be far more expensive and that also translates to less inclusiveness for customers, for businesses,” he said.
Elena Puigrefagut, European Broadcasting Union senior project manager, said the ITU needs to look more closely at how 477-960 MHz is already being used before reallocating more spectrum. The record and experience show wireless can't “share everywhere with the existing services due to the large separation distances that are required” of as much 300 kilometers, she said. “There’s still a lot of work to be done,” she said.