Rules on the refarming of GSM spectrum ratified by the European Union

New rules that will open up the GSM spectrum for use by high-speed mobile broadband services have now been officially ratified by the European Union and means that the 1987 directive that enables 3G services to be run on 2G spectrum has now been legally changed.

The reserving of particular frequencies in the 900MHz spectrum band to be used by GSM access technology only under the 22 year-old GSM directive have now been updated by the new rules.

A statement from the EU advised “National administrations have now six months to transpose the directive and to implement the decision so that the GSM spectrum bands are effectively made available for 3G.”

The ability to reuse the same spectrum in order to roll out services like 3G LTE and other next generation technologies will now be available to network operators under the new rules, which is primarily aimed at speeding up the rollout of mobile broadband services.

The EU advised “The Decision foresees the possibility of amendments to include technical usage parameters for further non GSM systems for which compatibility may be established at a later stage.”

It was also reiterated that the new rules will “strengthen competition and save the mobile industry up to 1.6 billion in capital costs,” according to a statement from Viviane Reding, the telecoms commissioner.

A consultation on its proposals to refarm the GSM spectrum so that it can be used for advanced mobile broadband services, and also the auctioning of various frequencies in the 2.5GHz band for use by WiMAX services and the 800MHz band, which has become known as the Digital Dividend, was launched recently by the government in the UK. Caps on the amount of spectrum any single operator can hold has also been recommended by the UK government.

The EU advised “When opening up the existing GSM licences, national regulators will have to examine competition between mobile operators and address distortions of competition if any.”

Source – Total Tele