Athens hosted last 11-13 September the 27th meeting of project team 1 of the Electronic Communications Committee (ECC PT1), attended by 70 participants, including representatives of administrations, operators, manufacturers, the European Radiocommunications Office (ERO), the European Commission, the UMTS Forum, INTEL and the WIMAX Forum, among others. PT1 is in charge of all issues concerning the future evolution of IMT-2000 and systems beyond (now designated as IMT), and coordinates European contributions and its positions on spectrum, regulatory and sharing/compatibility issues under WP8F of the International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunications Sector (ITU-R).
Given that the debate on item 1.4 of the 2007 World Radiocommunications Conference (WRC-07) was concluded at the last meeting, this subgroup only discussed the possible future of ECC PT1. In particular, given that the next ECC meeting will cover this subject, a document was drawn up containing the possible terms of reference (ToR) of the group that will be charged with handling ''IMT Issues''. Basically, it is proposed that the group in charge of this subject should define the planning criteria for the IMT bands and coordinate the CEPT positions in ITU-R for the development of IMT-Advanced. Additionally, given that the WRC-07 results regarding item 1.4 (IMT spectrum identification) may have impacts on the elaborated WRC, it was decided that same could be revised after the conference.
The subject most debated in this subgroup concerned the studies on sharing and compatibility in the 2500-2690 MHz band. Note that this discussion follows the development in ETSI (BRAN) of a harmonised standard (draft EN 302 544) for the 2.5 GHz band, based on WiMAX and designated as Broadband Data Transmission (BDT), which is parallel to the existing standard for IMT (also developed in ETSI (TFES)). This gives rise to technical questions on the way the 2.5 GHz band will be used by these systems, i.e., what measures are needed to ensure coexistence between both systems.
