CEPT gives the green light to CDMA-PAMR services
Paul Lambert, paul.lambert@informa.com
Global Mobile
24 March 2004
The European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) last week voted to pave the way for the introduction of CDMA services into Europe via CDMA-PAMR services in the 450MHz band. The landmark vote took place in Vilnius, Lithuania, following draft approval in a public consultation at the beginning of the year (Global Mobile, 28 Jan, 2004).
Chris van Diepenbeek, committee chairman at the Electronic Communications Committee of CEPT, told Global Mobile that the vote to approve 1.25MHz of spectrum in the 450MHz and 900MHz bands for CDMA-PAMR faced opposition, but was passed by a majority of members - 22 out of 27.
Diepenbeek said the 1.25MHz bandwidth was not easy to decide on because a lot administrations will have to refarm existing spectrum. "Incumbent users are not happy, but it's up to administrations to assess CEPT's generic decision on a market-need basis," he said.
One CEPT member who voted at the meeting told Global Mobile that there was "a lot of debate, as people are afraid of what kind of services will be offered, particularly those in the GSM and UMTS camp."
"There has been opposition from the GSM/UMTS community, so God knows how the operators are going to react," said another member working for a company with interests in seeing CDMA enter the European market. "They have lobbied intensively against this decision. Their behavior has been disproportionate, given that we're talking about relatively small amounts of frequencies, not large swathes that could be used to compete against them.
"This has been a long-running and contentious frequency-allocation process leading up to the announcement. It removes a key barrier to the widespread adoption of CDMA in the PMR and PAMR band across Europe. It's a formal approval that CDMA is an appropriate technology option for use in these bands, especially from the perspective of spectrum efficiency and technical compatibility."