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ITU Workshop on ‘IMT for the Next Decade’ held in Bangkok
Geneva, 21 March 2011—
The
ITU Regional workshop on “IMT for the Next Decade”, which took place in Bangkok,
Thailand on 21 March 2011, featured top-level experts from around the world, who
came together to look at the market, services and technology required for the
development of IMT for the next decade. ITU organized the workshop in close
collaboration with the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology,
Royal Government of Thailand. It attracted over 170 participants from 28
countries.
Governments, regulators, industry
stakeholder, academia and UN Agencies stressed the necessity of further
development of future mobile technologies and services as well as access to
sufficient spectrum to ensure the widest availability of broadband services to
all users.
ITU plays a leading role in establishing the
standards and spectrum arrangements for the current IMT-2000
— or 3G
—
systems and for “IMT-Advanced”, which provides the global platform for the next
generations of mobile broadband services. It is now the right time to review the
initial forecasts of spectrum requirements that were made and to assess what
further actions may be required to realize the vast potential of global mobile
broadband to connect the world. This review is being addressed in ITU’s
Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) Study Group and Conference activities.
The workshop examined the trends in data
traffic growth due to advanced services and terminals, such as smart phones, and
addressed the potential of the Asia-Pacific region in the future mobile market,
where it has the highest market share and growth rate. The success of the mobile
sector can be emulated by mobile broadband to connect rural and remote areas in
a cost effective manner.
Experts at the workshop stressed that access
to sufficient spectrum is essential to sustain and further stimulate the growth
of mobile broadband in the Asia-Pacific region. The workshop also emphasized the
role of ITU in technological and regulatory aspects of mobile broadband
standardization activities, including work on IMT development within ITU-R
Working Party 5D.
Demands for radio spectrum from
broadcasting, wireless and mobile services, as well as emergency communications
are calling for the modernization of radio spectrum management to harness the
potential offered by new technologies and services. Over 130 countries have
already introduced IMT-2000, otherwise known as 3G mobile services, and many
countries have been examining the next phase in the development of global mobile
broadband: IMT-Advanced. These demands are more pressing in the Asia-Pacific
region, which is home to nearly 62 per cent of the world population and to 45.8
per cent of the world’s mobile subscribers. The leading operators and
manufacturers of IMT technologies are also based in this region.
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