The 32nd meeting of the ECO working group EFIS-MG (Frequency Information System - Maintenance Group) was held last 16-17 September in Tallinn, Estonia, chaired by Pia Hammer Bloch. As Bloch is leaving the European Communications Office (ECO), the group will next be led by Thomas Weber. This gathering was attended by 20 representatives of 14 national regulatory authorities (NRAs), to wit: Germany, Estonia, Luxembourg, Austria, Spain, Switzerland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Finland, Portugal, the United Kingdom, France and Latvia, and by the ECO.
Among other activities, ECO EFIS/MG is responsible for maintaining the EFIS portal and developing/updating it in the context of the new European Commission (EC) spectrum policy and the R&TTE Directive (concerning radio and telecommunications terminal equipment and mutual conformity recognition), especially for the revision and integration of radio interface specifications (RIS) forms. It is also responsible for revising Decisions ECC/DEC/(01)03 (on EFIS) and ECC/DEC/(03)05 (on the publication of information about frequency allocations and applications) and is involved in activities regarding the spectrum inventory.
Note that CEPT report 46, the "Report from CEPT to the European Commission in response to the mandate on inclusion of information on rights of use for all uses of spectrum between 400 MHz and 6 GHz", was approved by the ECC on 8 March 2013, and that CEPT report 47, the "Second Report from CEPT to the European Commission in response to the mandate on inclusion of information on rights of use for all uses of spectrum between 400 MHz and 6 GHz (tasks 4 and 5 in response to the EC Mandate on EFIS)" was approved by the ECC on 21 June 2013.
The software of the EFIS portal (http://www.efis.dkhttp://www.efis.dk/) was updated. It is now possible to modify offline report 25 of the European Radiocommunication Committee (ERC), the "European common frequency allocation table (ECA)", software to implement Recommendation 70-03 is in installation and testing phase and implementation of the electronic questionnaires (by multiple choice, free text, etc) is nearing completion.
The NRAs attending the meeting reported on the current state of updates they have made or plan to make to EFIS. Note that Portugal reported that it had withdrawn two rights of use (RoU) since the beginning of the year and expects to update the allocations and applications in October/November 2013. Additionally, and regarding document updates, Portugal questioned the kind of documents it makes sense to have in the EFIS, reporting that it will also update that information, possibly making changes to what has been published in the EFIS.
EFIS/MG revises Decision ECC/DEC/(01)03 whenever relevant, especially the list of terms for applications (appendix 2 of the decision), and made several modification proposals to include new terms such as Medical Body Area Network Systems (MBANS) and to reorganise others.
Regarding the inclusion of Recommendation 70-03 in EFIS, it was noted that the software for generating Recommendation 70-03 has been implemented in the EFIS testing area and will soon be implemented in a real environment.
Note that it will most likely be necessary to produce an electronic questionnaire on the private mobile radio (PMR) band, to have information about such systems in the scope of spectrum inventory, and that the satellite community will supply information to EFIS about spectrum used by satellites in Europe.
