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ITU global standard for international mobile telecommunications ´IMT-Advanced´

For more than 30 years, ITU has been coordinating efforts of government, industry and private sector in the development of a global broadband multimedia international mobile telecommunication system, known as IMT. Since 2000, the world has seen the introduction of the first family of standards derived from the IMT concept. Nowadays there are more than 4.9 billion IMT subscribers and 7.3 billion IMT subscriptions in the world!

At Radiocommunication Assembly (RA-12), in Geneva, 16-20 January 2012, consensus on ´IMT-Advanced´ was reached to expand the IMT Radio Interface family by establishing the new IMT-Advanced standard. ´IMT-Advanced´ provides a global platform on which to build the next generations of mobile services - fast data access, unified messaging and broadband multimedia - in the form of exciting new interactive services.

IMT-Advanced systems started service around the year 2013, and since then it has been continually enhanced. The detailed specifications of the terrestrial radio interfaces of IMT-Advanced are defined in Recommendation ITU-R M.2012, which has also been keeping revised in accordance with the enhancement of IMT-Advanced standard.

During the ITU World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-15) in Geneva, 2-27 November 2015, it was agreed that additional spectrum will be identified for the future development of International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT), in accordance with Resolution 238 (WRC-15). Task Group 5/1 (TG 5/1) under Study Group 5 was established as the responsible group for this study. The additional spectrum will eventually be assigned by the next WRC-19.

´IMT-Advanced´

International Mobile Telecommunications-Advanced (IMT-Advanced) systems are mobile systems that include the new capabilities of IMT that go beyond those of IMT-2000. Such systems provide access to a wide range of telecommunication services including advanced mobile services, supported by mobile and fixed networks, which are increasingly packet-based.

IMT-Advanced systems support low to high mobility applications and a wide range of data rates in accordance with user and service demands in multiple user environments. IMT Advanced also has capabilities for high quality multimedia applications within a wide range of services and platforms, providing a significant improvement in performance and quality of service.