With just over 150 days to go before WRC-15, Eutelsat is urging the satellite industry to step up efforts to “fight invasion” from the mobile broadband sector’s efforts to secure new IMT spectrum from satellite frequencies not just at WRC-15, but at the following WRC conference in 2019.
Michel de Rosen, chairman and CEO of Eutelsat, said on Monday that the satellite industry is concerned by lobbying efforts from the mobile sector to not only secure IMT allocations in the contested extended C-band at WRC-15, but also to identify new candidate bands in higher frequencies that could be submitted at WRC-19.
“In other words, there is the battle for C-band, but behind that battle, there is the battle for all our spectrum, which the IMT industry will gladly take away from us,” he said.
The GSM Association has stated in official documents that the mobile sector will require another 600-800MHz worth of spectrum by 2020 to handle traffic demand over the next five to ten years. While the organization has been lobbying for harmonization of lower frequency bands (470-694/698MHz) and extended C-band (3.4GHz-4.2GHz), it is also targeting other satellite bands for additional spectrum, including the S-band (2.7-2.9GHz) and L-band (between 1300MHz-1518MHz).
De Rosen said the mobile sector arguably doesn’t need additional spectrum for future traffic demand because it is already sitting on plenty of unused spectrum.
“In most of the world, less than 50% of the spectrum already identified by the ITU for IMT services has actually been licensed,” he said. “We are talking about hundreds of megahertz of unlicensed spectrum that is just sitting there, not being used.”
Moreover, he added, of the IMT spectrum that has been licensed, much of it isn’t actually being utilized by users. “In other words, IMT still has plenty of room to grow before it starts lobbying for more spectrum.”
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