MCI WorldCom in partnership with the Services industriels de Genθve
MCI WorldCom in partnership with the Services industriels de Genθve
On 22 April 1999, the optical fibre network operator MCI WorldCom chose the Services industriels de Genθve (SIG) as the local partner for connecting the Geneva region to its European and global infrastructure. A total of 48 km of optical fibre (622 Mbit/s transmission capacity) comprising four loops is to be installed by the end of 1999.
The MCI WorldCom-SIG partnership offers the Geneva-based international organizations and local enterprises immediate access to the company's global network without going through intermediate operators. Some CHF 50 million will be invested in Geneva over a period of three years, with the local workforce initially expanding from the present 20 to over 50 staff by the end of 1999.
The Geneva metropolitan network will be brought into service during the fourth quarter of this year. In the meantime, SIG's existing optical fibres will be used to provide any connections that are required immediately.
The partnership with SIG represents a world first for MCI WorldCom. According to Patrick Moser, the company's Director-General for Switzerland , of the 120 urban networks worldwide, this is the first time a local partner has been of a high enough standard to be able to put its existing infrastructure at MCI WorldCom's disposal, with the effect that MCI WorldCom can be operational faster than any other operator already in Geneva.
Several years ago, MCI WorldCom elected to have its own international network: 120 000 km of optical fibre spanning all the continents, including 100 urban networks and the Gemini transatlantic network. Gemini, the result of a joint venture with Cable & Wireless, was brought into service in 1998 and offers the fastest link between New York and Zurich. Mr Moser does not mask his satisfaction as he points out that Gemini's passband could handle all the voice and data traffic between Europe and North America. Since liberalization of the telecommunication market in 1998, Europe has attracted considerable interest. Besides the Geneva metropolitan network, MCI WorldCom already has urban networks in Amsterdam, Brussels, Dublin, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt, Hanover, London, Paris, Rotterdam, Stockholm and Zurich.
The global network, of which Geneva is set to become an integral part, is monitored around the clock by the company's control centres. Any faults are located and corrected immediately, the network's full redundancy structure ruling out any risk of interruption. As Mr Moser again points out, the fewer the service providers involved in a communication, the easier it is to control its quality and reliability.
Integration of the metropolitan networks and continental connections means that a customer calling New York or London from Geneva will always be on the same network. Thus, MCI WorldCom ensures a constant passband whatever the customer's requirements. MCI WorldCom.
The liberalization of global telecommunications has inspired many advances in the availability, quality and variety
of communication services, but the benefits have not been shared equally around the world.
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A new technical and commercial approach to international infrastructure can narrow the communications gap between developed and developing economies |
While telecommunication providers have understandably concentrated on the regions which offer the greatest profit potential namely the buoyant, industrialized economies such as the United States, Europe and parts of the Far East the countries which comprise the developing world are actually the ones who could reap the greatest dividends from access to an information superhighway.
The barriers that have traditionally prevented this cross-fertilization of technological advances have ranged from the sheer cost of accessing a global network to the bewildering task of anticipating likely traffic for the next quarter of a century. The answer to the problem is to design a new communications model which will create a "living network" with simplified access and unlimited bandwidth in essence the creation of a true global information superhighway.
That is what lies at the heart of Project Oxygen a global optical fibre undersea cable network with landing points in nearly 100 countries and locations and a cable capacity of 2.56 Tbit/s.
Project Oxygen, which will start to come online in 2000, like its name suggests will help breathe life into the trailing communications infrastructures of the developing world. By offering bandwidth on demand, the new network will eliminate the need for every carrier to specify sometimes twenty-five years in advance the volume and direction of traffic it expects to send and receive.
Similarly, in the past, carriers had to make individual deals for every segment of every international route. Just negotiating each contract and attending the necessary meetings to reach an agreement could consume enormous amounts of time, energy, money and personnel. This situation was challenging even for developed nations, let alone developing countries where the burden could be intolerable. Now, once a carrier joins the project, none of these contracts and meetings are necessary and furthermore, early signatories to the network are eligible for rebates of up to 100 per cent on the amount they pay for access capacity.
Since the project will carry international traffic entirely within the network, transit fees are eliminated. This particularly benefits carriers from the emerging world, where these fees are more often a burden than a source of revenue.
And the project has removed or reduced other entry barriers for developing nations such as the cost of maintaining cable systems, which can now be handled under a single contract. The cost of building and operating cable-landing stations has been eliminated for Oxygen Network Landing Parties, as has the risk associated with changing technology. Under the "living network", whenever a portion of the network becomes congested, a new link will be generated to cope with the traffic. This protects carriers who in the past would have been faced with making further investment in new systems.
Carriers from developing countries have also become increasingly under pressure generated by market and regulatory changes and that has stifled their ability to capitalize on global communications.
Project Oxygen world map
State-owned operators throughout the world have witnessed downward pressure on near term profits due to competition from such areas as callback operators, bypass operators and refilers.
In addition, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) forced a lowering of accounting rates that badly hit emerging countries who relied heavily on the foreign exchange generated by accounting rate settlements.
Left alone, it is possible that carriers in the developing world would be forced to the periphery of the market, which could effectively slam the door for some countries on any access to the global information superhighway.
The solution depends on carriers' diversifying services by looking beyond the current Internet technology and dependence on voice traffic. Project Oxygen's business model emphasizes the development of video-based applications and services that will generate significantly higher revenues for carriers and protect them against diminishing voice traffic revenues. The sheer size of the network 168 000 km of optical fibre cable has generated economies of scale that will benefit all carriers. In fact, the cost of capacity drops exponentially with the increase in capacity.
Project Oxygen will offer every country the same network reliability, ubiquity, and robustness as carriers enjoy in the United States, Europe and Japan. It will ensure every country has access to the same communications technology and applications. It will be the first cable system to provide true bandwidth on demand a capability that will bring enormous advantages to carriers from developed and developing countries alike.
From a standpoint of bringing communications to the developing world, the International Telecommunications Satellite
Organization (INTELSAT) has been rightly described as the most momentous project of the past half-century. Project
Oxygen looks set to become the most momentous of the next fifty years.
Project Oxygen Phase 1: statistics
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Despite initially bullish prospects, wireless local loop (WLL) deployments in Africa have evolved at a relatively slow pace. At the end of 1998, nearly 215 000 subscribers on the continent were connected to WLL systems, including less than half in sub-Saharan Africa. In 1998, WLL connections accounted for less than 10 per cent of all main lines added.
While African operators are attracted to fixed wireless systems and continue to regard WLL as an adequate solution to pervasive low telephone penetration and pentup demand for basic telephony services, a range of issues have shaken operator confidence in WLL systems.
Obstacles to WLL growth, such as the absence of reliable electric power grids, the upsurge of confusing standards and technologies, the cost of WLL systems and the existence of monopolistic and antiquated regulatory frameworks, have hampered deployment.
However, prospects remain sound as African governments increase efforts to reform telecommunication sectors and attract private capital through operator privatization and market liberalization. As a result, a slew of opportunities have emerged principally in South Africa and Egypt, but also in markets in West and East Africa.
A range of factors have spurred WLL growth in Africa, including the inherent advantages of WLL systems, low telephone
penetration, pent-up demand and the privatization and liberalization of basic telephony services. WLL features have
struck a chord among Africa's basic services operators. Fixed wireless systems provide a faster network construction
time frame than copper, particularly by enabling operators to save time on street digging, cable laying, and so forth.
In addition, wireless systems enable operators to meet rural needs where copper lines are prohibitively expensive and
difficult to install.
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* This article is published here by courtesy of Pyramid Research, a division of The Economist Intelligence Unit, which specializes in telecommunications research and consulting in emerging markets. |
Furthermore, fixed wireless systems provide operators with a flexible offering, allowing them to expand the network as demand evolves or to transport the service offering to different locations. In the African environment in which the majority still cannot afford basic services, service flexibility is critical to adjust to demand as customers migrate, thus limiting unused capacity.
Low telephone penetration and existing pent-up demand for basic telephony have helped drive growth as well. Out of 31 markets examined in Pyramid's report, Wireless markets and strategies in Africa, 20 had a telephone penetration rate lower than 2 per cent and more than half had a rate lower than 1 per cent in 1998.
The low telephone penetration generates long waiting lists, with potential customers waiting more than one year for a connection to the fixed network. Most operators manage waiting lists of 10 000 to 100 000 potential customers, with actual demand estimated at two to three times the waiting list.
Privatization and liberalization are the latest WLL growth factors and arguably the most important catalysts for WLL market growth. Privatization and liberalization bring a solution to a perennial obstacle to fixed network expansion in Africa, namely the paucity of investment capital.
As African governments look for additional sources of revenue to sustain budget spending and seek ways to reduce government financial involvement in network expansion, private operators are called upon to foot the bill.
Most African countries have either privatized or planned to privatize State-owned operators by 2003. In exchange for exclusivity periods of four to seven years, governments typically set network expansion targets to newly privatized operators. In turn, the stringent expansion man dates compel operators to favour systems such as WLL allowing rapid network deployment within short time frames (see Table 1).
Despite the ambitious WLL-based expansion plans, operators have faced a handful of challenges that have slowed
network expansion, including unspecific and outdated regulatory frameworks, the cost of WLL systems for operators and
subscribers and the absence of reliable and developed power grids. Regulatory frameworks across the continent are in a
transition phase, with most countries moving from monopoly-based systems to independently regulated frameworks.
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Table 1 Selected markets (main line deployment targets and WLL use)
SNO: second national operator. Source: Operators, Pyramid Research. |
Meanwhile, many regulators still struggle with the allocation of appropriate frequency to WLL systems, cellular networks, satellite and microwave access systems. In addition, the congestion of frequency bands, notably in the 800 MHz, and the difficulties regulators face in clearing the bands are compelling vendors to propose solutions operating at unused higher frequencies such as Alcatel's 3.5 GHz DECT systems.
The multitude of standards and proprietary systems only exacerbate the difficulty of selecting a technology. Not all systems can adequately interface with existing exchanges. While the industry trend is moving towards a standardized V5.2 interface, some vendors continue to offer V5.1.
Furthermore, the cost of WLL systems has led many operators to harness their ambitions. Contracts awarded in South Africa and Nigeria suggest a per line cost of USD 700 to 900, a cost many operators find high for a solution they argue has yet to fully prove itself in the African environment. Even at USD 600 per line, many operators continue to consider WLL an attractive but not compelling alternative to copper. Operators typically expect a cost per line of USD 500 to 600, but such a price range remains elusive.
The cost of using the system is another obstacle to WLL growth, as operators face the predicament of offering basic services at high prices. While many elect to subsidize the systems, particularly in rural areas, that option is simply too costly. Operators who do not subsidize, offer WLL-based service at tariffs out of the reach of most potential subscribers.
In Kenya and Nigeria, WLL terminals retail for almost USD 1000. In addition, connection to WLL systems in Nigeria costs close to USD 1000. Such exorbitant tariffs make WLL solutions largely unappealing, particularly in the light of rapidly growing, more flexible and less expensive cellular services. Unless prices for fixed wireless terminals decline, they are likely to remain a strong impediment to WLL market growth.
The absence of reliable and developed electric power systems across the continent emerged as a major obstacle to deployments of WLL systems as well. In many regards, telecommunication development has preceded electric power supply development. In most countries, government monopolies dominate the electricity provision market and have to contend with a demand higher than the supply capacity. In addition, WLL deployments in rural areas take place in regions without electric power, compelling the operator to resort to alternative power solutions such as solar panels and batteries.
In South Africa, Telkom SA Ltd. virtually had to purchase most of the panels available on world markets to start deployment. Even in urban areas, initial deployment has been rocky. In 1998, a drought-induced decline in power capacity on Ghana's Akosombo Dam generated power shortages in the country, disrupting WLL deployment.
In Senegal, the operator adopted a cautious approach to WLL systems after recurrent power shortages in peri-urban areas disrupted field trials. Similar problems occurred in Nigeria, delaying the service launch of some WLL operators.
While these problems may have been one-time mishaps, the trend is worrisome and begs for a rapid alternative to electric power besides solar panels.
Despite the shortcomings highlighted here, prospects for WLL expansion on the continent are brighter than ever because government mandates and market liberalization spur network expansion.
The urge to meet expansion targets and outperform the competition strongly outweighs WLL flaws, as operators strive to iron out most problems and proceed with WLL deployment. South Africa and Nigeria are two illustrations of the effect of privatization and liberalization on WLL market growth.
In South Africa, privatized operator Telkom is required to install 2.7 million new lines, replace 1.25 million analogue lines with digital lines and add 120 000 payphones within five years. To meet its objectives, Telkom is resorting to WLL systems, particularly in densely populated areas with low penetration in which it is not exactly sure where the customers will be located.
Similarly, Telkom earmarks WLL for areas where it expects low uptake, so the company can install only the amount of equipment that will be needed. Telkom also prefers WLL technology in high-theft areas where copper cables are stolen before the operator has time to connect the lines.
In underserviced areas, Telkom plans to use WLL for approximately 35 per cent of new lines added for each of the next four years. As a result, Pyramid Research forecasts that Telkom will have a WLL subscriber base of 650 000 by year-end 2003, accounting for 20 per cent of the total African market and more than 50 per cent of all WLL connections in sub-Saharan Africa (see Figure 1).
Figure 1 Africa: WLL distribution per region, 2003 (out of a total of 2.9 million)
Source: Pyramid Research, Wireless markets and strategies in Africa (March 1999).
Nigeria is also emerging as a potentially lucrative WLL market. In a drive to meet a demand estimated at about 3.4 million, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) awarded licences to nine private operators to offer national basic telephony services at the local level. As of year-end 1998, three operators had launched services using WLL systems to accelerate service provision and pre-empt competition. More operators will cut over in 1999, generating an attractive market for WLL vendors. In 1997 and 1998, Nigerian operators were awarded contracts for the installation of a total initial capacity of about 50 000 lines.
Despite initial problems in establishing networks, the market is set to grow rapidly. Pyramid Research forecasts that Nigeria's WLL subscriber base will grow faster than the cellular subscriber bases principally as a result of increased competition in the WLL basic services market. Likewise, Nigeria will become West Africa's first and one of Africa's leading WLL markets, with an estimated subscriber base of approximately 280 000 by year-end 2003.
While the range of obstacles described in this article will continue to hamper WLL deployments, regulatory and strategic developments in key regions suggest that the African WLL subscriber base will grow tenfold to 2003. In North Africa, Egypt Telecom will continue to rely on WLL for network expansion and remain Africa's largest WLL market. Likewise, East Africa will develop a solid WLL-installed base around deployments in Tanzania and Kenya.
Assuming that most governments in East, West and Southern Africa privatize fixed carriers or liberalize basic services operators by 2001 and average fixed wireless terminal prices fall below USD 500, Pyramid forecasts that WLL will account for more than 25 per cent of all main lines added by 2003. Pyramid forecasts a total subscriber base reaching three million in 2003.
Africa's share of the total WLL subscriber base in emerging markets will rise to 10 per cent in 2003 from nearly 8 per cent in 1998, overtaking Eastern Europe as the third largest WLL market in emerging regions, behind Asia and Latin America (see Figure 2).
Figure 2 WLL subscriber evolution in emerging markets, 1994-2003
Source: Pyramid Research.
National spectrum management began in the early 1920s with record keeping logging out frequencies to applicants essentially on a first come, first served basis. The 1947 Atlantic City Radio Conference made foundations for today's international spectrum management by copying, to some degree, the United States national spectrum management system of the time.
Today, the concept of spectrum management embraces all activities related to regulations, planning, allocation,
assignment, use, and control of the radio-frequency spectrum and the satellite orbits. To be effective, any spectrum
management system should embrace sound spectrum engineering, monitoring and enforcement mechanisms.
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* Part 2. Part 3 will be published in the next issue of ITU News. |
Three objectives shape any spectrum management system: conveying policy goals, apportioning scarcity, and avoiding conflicts, with due regard to social, political, economic, ecological, and other aspects. The society is composed of various groups, each with its particular situation, interests, goals and views.
As a consequence of spectrum scarcity, conflicts arise between those who have access to the spectrum resource and those without it. Conflicts also arise between the proponents of competing uses of the spectrum as well as between those who manage the spectrum and those who use it. These conflicts may be of various natures: commercial, political, physical interference, and so on.
For those whose needs have already been satisfied, spectrum management should assure the continuation of the existing status. Any modification would threaten their acquired benefits. On the other hand, the newcomers have no access to the spectrum they need. For them, the principal aim of spectrum management is to change the way the spectrum is assigned and to eliminate obstacles that prevent them from entering the competition. What is seen as the best for one group is not necessarily good for the other. Since the very beginning, spectrum management rules and regulations have tended to reflect the relative balance of powers of the competing interest groups.
Traditionally, the uses made of the spectrum/orbit resources have been based on frequency allocation principles, as given in the Table of Frequency Allocations of the Radio Regulations. Allocation means the distribution of a frequency band to a wireless service, allotment to a country or area, and assignment to an individual radio station. Some allocations are worldwide, others are regional, i.e. uniform throughout a particular region.
A country can make an assignment to an individual station or to a group of stations when needed. This is the so-called ad hoc coordination or frequency distribution method. The alternative is known as a priori frequency distribution, or planning. For services subject to a priori planning, an assignment in accordance with the plan receives protection from any other assignment. In the case of ad hoc managed services, the protection is given in accordance with the priority of registration dates a system frequently described as first come, first served.
International frequency plans are agreed at competent radio conferences for specific applications, geographic regions, and frequency bands that are subject to a priori frequency planning. A frequency plan is a table, or more generally, a function that assigns appropriate characteristics to each radio station (or group of stations) at hand.
The name "frequency planning" is a remnant of the early days of radio, when only the operating frequency of a radio station and its geographic location could vary. International plans are general and contain a minimal number of details. In contrast, design and operational frequency plans include all the details necessary to operate the station.
In a priori frequency plans, specific frequency bands and associated service areas are reserved for particular application well in advance of their real use. The distribution of the spectrum resource is made on the basis of the expected or declared needs of the parties interested. That approach was used, for instance, by the 1997 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-97) that established another plan for the broadcasting-satellite service in the frequency bands 11.7-12.2 GHz in Region 3 and 11.7-12.5 GHz in Region 1 and a plan for feeder links for the broadcasting-satellite service in the fixed-satellite service in the frequency bands 14.5-14.8 and 17.3-18.1 GHz in Regions 1 and 3. Both plans are annexed to the Radio Regulations.
Advocates of the a priori approach indicate that the ad hoc method is not fair because it transfers all the burden to latecomers who must accommodate their requirements with those of the existing users. Opponents, on the other hand, point out that a priori planning freezes the technological progress and leads to "warehousing" the resources. Here, warehousing means not using but keeping in reserve. However, when not used, no resource can offer benefits.
Although all usable frequency bands have been allocated to services, only a small portion of them is subject to international a priori planning. In this connection, many countries currently lacking the necessary financial resources are afraid that they will never have access to unplanned frequency bands or positions on the geostationary satellite orbit. These bands and positions might already be occupied when the countries will be ready to use them.
Critics of a priori planning indicate also that it is impossible to predict future requirements with a degree of accuracy, and any plan based on unrealistic requirements has no practical value. Instead, it blocks frequencies and freezes development.
Indeed, technological progress is very fast, and the plan may become outdated before it is implemented. We have to note that in fact, the a priori and ad hoc approaches differ only in the time horizon taken into account. Finally, one may argue that access to services does not require the ownership of, or control over, the spectrum/orbit resources.
What is important is that there is no mechanism to limit the requirements, as the spectrum/orbit resource is available at no cost at international planning conferences.
Although the ITU Convention calls for minimizing the use of spectrum resources: "... each country has an incentive to overstate its requirements, and there are few accepted or objective criteria for evaluating each country's stated need. In fact, the individual country itself may have only the dimmest perception of its needs over the time period for which the plan is to be constructed. ... Under these circumstances, it is easy to make a case that allotment plans are not only difficult to construct, but when constructed will lead to a waste of resources as frequencies and orbit positions are "warehoused" to meet future, indeterminate needs...".1
These remarks, however, do not concern the frequency planning at the design stage of wireless systems, when all requirements are "real" and "immediate".
The current spectrum management policies and practices are inherited from the times when radio was mainly under State monopoly and access to spectrum resources was free. However, the world has changed in the meantime and the role of governments is still changing. State monopoly is being abandoned in many countries and the importance of the private sector and non-governmental international corporations is increasing. A single market is being created and a competitive worldwide market economy is developing.
New satellite constellations and stratospheric stations are being planned. New wide-band spread-spectrum systems based on a new concept of spectrum sharing are becoming more and more popular. Digital signal processing offers new possibilities for the integration of services, which are not yet fully exploited.
New satellite and stratospheric station technologies are being planned. All of this does not fit well into the framework of the present Radio Regulations. Redistribution, and better use of radio waves, is felt necessary by many.
Although the present spectrum management system has been criticized almost from its introduction, nothing better has been agreed. Developing countries are afraid that there will be no spectrum to satisfy their future needs. They would also like to exploit their old equipment for as long as it works. Developed countries are afraid that they cannot implement new technologies and develop new applications because of warehousing and regulatory barriers.
In the past, all the Radio Regulations were criticized as being too complicated and excessively rigid. The new regulations, which provisionally came into force on 1 January 1999, were expected to solve the problem, but it is too early to assess the results and we have to wait and see to what degree these expectations were justified.
Every radio conference makes the participants equally unhappy with the results achieved. But, this equal dissatisfaction of all parties involved indicates in fact that the best compromise possible has been reached; otherwise some parties would be more satisfied than others! Over the years, various improvements have been proposed, but few have been implemented and the fundamental rules remain unchanged.
One of the reasons of slow adaptation of the ITU process to the changing environment is fragmentation and disparity among the Member States, their needs and their interests. In spite of large differences between, say, China, representing a billion people, and that of Tonga, representing a hundred thousand people, the ITU Constitution warrants a single vote to each of them, as to any other Member country. Similar disparity exists in the telecommunication infrastructure.
Another reason is the national sovereignty and consensus-based decision process the two most sacred principles in ITU. These principles imply that common decisions are possible only if acceptable to the weakest and most conservative Members. Still, another reason is the separation of the decision-making process from economic mechanisms.
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1 Robinson G. O.: Regulating international airwaves: the 1979 WARC, Spectrum Management and Engineering, IEEE Press (1985), pages 43-69. |
The financial contribution of each Member State to the Union's common budget is voluntary and without any correlation to the number of radio stations or satellites that that Member State uses. Consumers or users, service providers and equipment manufacturers are represented by governments in ITU's decision-making process.
The experience gained in dealing with other resources indicates that economic incentives could be used as an instrument to rationalize the use of scarce resources. As mentioned earlier, most countries have introduced a fee system for access to spectrum/orbit resources at the national level.
If introduced internationally, "spectrum occupation fees" could limit excessive demand and free the frequencies and orbital positions that are now "warehoused". The income could be used to develop telecommunication infrastructure where needed. Such an idea was formally proposed (among others by this author), but did not receive substantial support at WRC-97. The majority of ITU Member countries have preferred to continue with the administrative "due diligence" approach that focuses on bureaucratic aspects.
The concept of spectrum management through market forces, put forward in some countries, has found as many supporters as opponents. The idea is to replace the regulatory and fee system by a competitive market economy mechanism. For the time being, that action has been limited to a few countries and to selected frequency bands.
Its advocates indicate that market forces automatically match the demand to the available resource capacity and that the market-based management is inexpensive. Moreover, relying upon administrative decision-making is inferior to relying on market forces because decisions are arbitrary and often mistaken in determining what is the best interest of users. However, market forces could make wireless applications more expensive and influence the existing balance between the further developments of wired and wireless communication services.
The spectrum-market concept was implemented in a few countries, but the real break through was the series of spectrum auctions conducted by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1994 and 1995. Earlier, licences to use radio frequency to offer wireless communication services were awarded on a "first come, first served" basis, by lottery, or by comparative hearings ("beauty contests"), almost for free.
Now the FCC is granting the licences to the highest bidders. The first auction in the United States (held in 1994) ended with the assignment of three bands of 1 MHz around 900 MHz for a total of about USD 650 million. In 1995, two pairs of bands of 15 MHz around 1900 MHz for personal communication services were assigned for a total of USD 7.74 thousand million2.
On top of this, the successful bidders have to pay expenses for relocating thousands of microwave transmission facilities that were already using that portion of the spectrum. These numbers, however, should not be generalized as the price depends on the demand and supply. Spectrum in the centre of New York or Tokyo will cost much more than somewhere in the middle of a desert. However, one thing is clear: the consumers will pay the final bill.
It should be noted here that the creation of an international spectrum market would be the next logical step after the introduction of national spectrum markets. It would be a real revolution and in view of a large inertia of the ITU mechanism and many open questions it seems improbable that it will happen soon.
No evidence has been published that selling the spectrum on the global market will solve the scarcity problem in a
way acceptable to all parties involved. The market approach, combined with sovereignty, still an indisputable principle
in ITU, may increase further the existing fragmentation in spectrum management.
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2 Bell T. E.: Main event: spectrum auctions. IEEE Spectrum, January 1996, page 28. |
The World Broadcasting Unions' Technical Committee (WBU-TC) has issued two statements on high definition television (HDTV) to the world's manufacturers of professional HDTV production and postproduction equipment and to the International Telecommunication Union.
In the first statement, WBU-TC encourages manufacturers to develop and market HDTV production equipment in conformity with the high definition common image format (HD-CIF) specifications of ITU's Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R). This equipment should be capable of operating at both 50 and 60 Hz.
In the second statement, addressed to ITU-R Working Party 11A (Television systems and data broadcasting), WBU-TC reaffirms its support for the proposal to align the total number of lines per frame in the HD-CIF production and programme exchange standard. The alignment will ensure that all frame rates have 1080 active lines and 1125* total lines.
WBU-TC has also drawn the attention of Working Party 11A to the rapidly developing HD-CIF 1920/1080P/16:9/24, 25 and 30 frame production and postproduction systems for electronic motion picture applications.
As these have the same HD-CIF image matrix as specified in ITU-R BT.709-3, Part II, the Working Party is urged to take note of the 24, 25, and 30 frame CIF development in its future work.
The World Broadcasting Unions comprise the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU), the Arab States Broadcasting Union (ASBU), the Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU), the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the International Association of Broadcasting (IAB), the North American National Broadcasters Association (NANBA), the Ibero-American Television Organization (OTI), and the Union of National Radio and Television Organizations of Africa (URTNA).
WBU-TC is responsible for technical broadcasting issues of importance to WBU members. As such, it studies broadcasting technologies, informs WBU members on technical issues, and coordinates collective action on technical matters associated with broadcasting technology, where such action could bring significant benefits to individual broadcasting unions.
WBU-TC encourages the development and introduction of common technical and/or operational standards and fosters interoperability among systems where common standards do not exist.
It coordinates broadcaster requirements for the member broadcasting unions, and develops common technical positions which are presented to standards-setting bodies, such as the International Telecommunication Union, and to professional and consumer electronic equipment manufacturers.
For more information, please contact: "Om P. Khushu, Director, Technical Department, Asia-Pacific Broadcasting
Union (ABU). Tel.: +60 3 282 3108. Fax: +60 3 282 5292".
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* At present, the 50 Hz specification in ITU-R Recommendation BT.709-3 has 1250 total lines while the 60 Hz specification has 1125 total lines per frame. While this difference does not affect the common image-sampling matrix, it is desirable to align the total number of lines to 1125 in both the 50 and 60 Hz specifications. |
Singapore has notified the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Telecommunications Working Group that it intends to initiate implementation of phase 1 of the APEC multilateral mutual recognition arrangement (TEL MRA) from 1 July 1999. This commitment was given at the APEC Telecommunications Working Group meeting held in Miyazaki (Japan) in March 1999. Singapore is among the first group of APEC economies which has notified its readiness to implement the MRA when it comes into operation from 1 July 1999. The other economies, which have indicated their readiness, are Australia, Hongkong (China), the Republic of Korea, Taipei (China) and the United States, says the Telecommunication Authority of Singapore (TAS).
Singapore
Photo: Michael Ozaki (ITU 990025)
The APEC TEL MRA is the world's first multilateral MRA covering telecommunications equipment.
The MRA is essentially an arrangement among APEC member economies for mutual recognition of conformity assessment of telecommunications equipment. It will reduce technical barriers to trade in telecommunications equipment by allowing equipment to be tested in the exporting economy, in accordance with the importing economy's requirements. Telecommunications equipment can then be accepted in the importing economy with minimal further regulatory action. As testing and certification are expensive procedures for exporters and importers, the simplified procedures will reduce these costs and shorten the time for suppliers to market their telecommunication products.
The MRA covers network terminal equipment and radiocommunication equipment that are subject to telecommunications
regulation, including wireline and wireless, terrestrial and satellite equipment. Besides the telecommunication aspects,
the MRA also covers the electromagnetic compatibility and electrical safety aspects of telecommunications equipment.
TAS
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