With all the interest in wireless communications at the moment, it’s no surprise that the radio spectrum is under pressure. The allocation of radio waves could change significantly over the next couple of years, with two significant conferences coming up that will examine the current situation, and attempt to predict future needs. The World Administrative Radio Conference, of the International Telecommunication Union, will discuss specific frequency-allocation issues raised at previous conferences, while the first stage of a Detailed Spectrum Investigation will be carried out by the European Radiocommunications Office. One of the major areas being addressed by the world talks is the congestion of frequencies below 1GHz, the range best suited to mobile radio applications.To this end, the Radio Conference will look at opening up the 1GHz-to-3GHz frequency band, to take the pressure off the existing frequencies. There is also the problem, however, that developing countries favour these short-wave frequencies for transmission of their domestic radio services according to David Court, head of the European Radiocommunications Office, this may lead to a future International Telecommunication Union conference to discuss how short-wave frequency allocations can be fanned out. The conference will also look at the demands that emerging technologies will place on the radio spectrum. In particular, digital satellite broadcasting, which requires comparatively large bandwidth, will also need frequency allocation within the same 1GHz-to-3GHz band, which is being considered for mobile radio, while provision also needs to be made for high-definition television transmission. Court reckons that the Europeans are one of the main driving forces behind the world conference and that the Euro-delegation has its own package of proposals to try and solve these problems. While the world conference will be painting with a broad brush, the European conference will be filling in the detail with the aim of producing a common European Table of Frequency Allocation to be implemented by June of the year 2008. The first phase of the discussions will attempt to tackle only frequencies between 3.4GHz and 31GHz, but eventually the Detailed Spectrum Investigation will cover the full range of frequencies from 29.7MHz to 105GHz. It will be looking at the frequencies covered by the Radio Conference, which fall in the range below 3GHz in around six years’ time, according to Court.
