The European Commission this week filed a legal procedure against Germany for failing to allocate the 2500-2690 MHz radio frequency band for a wide range of radio services, including fixed wireless services.
Under EU radio spectrum harmonisation rules (pdf), all EU countries have to ensure that all kinds of telecoms services can utilise this band. Typically, some 140 Mhz is available for FDD-based 3G/LTE services, while 50 MHz is available for TDD-based broadband wireless such as WiMAX.
The EU rules stipulate that the sub-band (2.570 – 2.620 MHz) can be used by TDD or other usage modes. At present, Germany only allocates this frequency band to mobile services.
“Unfortunately, despite intensive contacts between the Commission services and the German authorities, they have still not yet taken all steps to ensure that the 2500-2690 MHz band is allocated to fixed wireless services and technologies. This represents not only a violation of EU law, but it also could delay the roll-out of wireless broadband services throughout Germany and Europe,” said EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding.
The Commission this week sent a letter of formal notice to Germany, the first step in an infringement procedure. The German government has two months to respond. If the Commission receives no reply, or if the observations of the German government are not satisfactory, the Commission can issue a reasoned opinion (the second stage in an infringement procedure). If after that Germany still fails to fulfil its obligations under EU law, the Commission can refer the case to the European Court of Justice.
A detailed overview of the telecoms infringement proceedings is available here.
Motorola will supply WiMax gear for the Irish Imagine Communication Group. Imagine is the No. 2 business telecoms company in Ireland and provides services to 17,000 businesses. Meanwhile, Clearwire International is expanding into Spain. Clearwire will sell 3.5 GHz WiMAX in selected cities, under the same CLEAR brand. Intel acquired 50MHz of TDD spectrum in Sweden this summer and will likely look for local partners to build and operate a mobile WiMAX network in Nokia’s backyard.
EU countries, including Austria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom are preparing auctions in the 2500-2690 MHz band, but cellular-based LTE will likely be the dominate technology used there. CEPT generally divides the 200MHz of spectrum available in the 2.6Ghz band into a 140 MHz block dedicated to FDD systems and a 50 MHz TDD block.
In the United States, Clear has one thing that cellular operators don’t have (besides a working “4G” system); 120 Mhz of greenfield spectrum. Cellular operators already bought up nearly all the 700MHz space available in the United States.
In other EU Commission news, the 790-862 MHz band is being eyed for new 3G/4G services, as spectrum is freed up during the digital television conversion.
“I call on EU countries to speed up the move to digital TV and to make it happen by 1 January 2012. I also urge national authorities to use the digital dividend in a pro-competitive way to open up the market for new operators and new services, maximising the impact on the economy”, said Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media.
The EU thinks it could give the economy a boost of €20 to €50 billion. The most recent 2008 FCC auction for 700 MHz frequencies generated nearly $20 billion in revenue for the U.S. Treasury, mostly from Verizon and AT&T.
