ECC PT1 - Maison-Alfort

The 18th meeting of project team 1 of the Electronic Communications Committee (ECC PT1) was held on 6-8 September in Maison-Alfort, France. ECC PT1 covers all issues concerning the future evolution of IMT-2000 and systems beyond and co-ordinates European contributions and their positions on spectrum, regulatory and sharing/compatibility issues under WP8F of the ITU Radiocommunications Sector (ITU-R). Particularly noteworthy is this group?s responsibility for preparing the positions of the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) in items 1.4 and 1.9 of the 2007 World Radiocommunications Conference (WRC07).

The subject most discussed at this meeting concerned the identification of spectrum for the future evolution of IMT-2000 and systems beyond with regard to WRC07. Specifically, the fundamental question concerned additional spectrum for such systems, below 860 MHz, namely in the 450-470 MHz band. After some debate, it was concluded that CEPT will not support this band as a candidate band for future IMT-2000 systems and systems beyond IMT-2000.

The meeting saw completion of the process of revising ERC/DEC(99)25 ?Harmonised Use of Spectrum for Terrestrial IMT-2000/UMTS Systems Operating in the 1900-1980 MHz, 2010-2025 MHz and 2110-2170 MHz Bands?, including, besides proposed revision of the 2010-2025 MHz sub-band (removing the current restriction from the 2010-2020 sub-band, which is meant for private applications, enabling UMTS FDD (frequency division) uplink, beyond UMTS TDD (time division duplexing) applications), other applications, specifically in the 1900-1920 MHz band.

Still under development in this group is the report on UMTS compatibility with GSM900 and GSM1800. The next meeting will see the start of studies to review Recommendation ERC REC 01-01 (Border Co-ordination of UMTS/IMT-2000 Systems), with the aim of extending its application to the 2.5 GHz UMTS/IMT-2000 extension band.