This Attachment is based on the UAE experience of spectrum redeployment which may be of use for some of the developing countries.
| 1 | The change in channel plan for private mobile radio |
The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) of the UAE follows a transparent mechanism for the development of the spectrum regulatory framework whereby all regulations undergo a public consultation procedure. The private mobile radio regulations cover the channel plans for the VHF and the UHF bands where the TRA proposed to reduce the channel size from 12.5 kHz to 6.25 kHz for doubling the number of channels available for assignment. Majority of the respondents informed that very few vendors are manufacturing equipment supporting 6.25 kHz. The digital mobile radio works on 12.5 kHz and delivers spectrum efficiency of 6.25 kHz per communication channel by making use of two-slot time division multiple access (TDMA) to provide a doubling of capacity compared to analogue systems by accommodating two simultaneous and independent calls within the same 12.5 kHz channel. There are two FDMA-based systems offering 6.25 kHz but the challenge is that one standard is proprietary and for the other only one vendor is manufacturing the equipment. Therefore, the decision has to be made in such cases based on the following principles:
| – | Consumer benefit by access to low cost equipment available from variety of manufacturers. |
| – | Not to create market disruption by stopping a certain category of equipment on channel size. |
| – | Use of spectrum pricing as a tool for incentivizing use of 6.25 kHz. |
| – | Adopt channel plan which caters for both 6.25 kHz and 12.5 kHz channels. |
| 2 | The use of 8.33 kHz channelling for VHF aeronautical mobile |
The UAE TRA initiated consultations with the stakeholders to implement 8.33 kHz channelling in the VHF aeronautical mobile band. Although the majority of the UAE aircraft are fitted with equipment which supports this channelling, very few old aircraft do not have compliant radios. This example is quoted as the challenge in this band cannot be addressed by a single country and has to be taken at a regional level. ICAO EUR Region enforced mandatory carriage of 8.33 kHz radios above FL245 in 1999 to alleviate the congestion in the VHF. The European Commission decided to regulate on the implementation of VHF 8.33 kHz to the European airspace above FL195. Several studies were conducted and the implementation was done in phases and the details are available on the EUROCONTROL website. The issue will now be dealt at the ICAO MID region level through consensus of all participating countries.
| 3 | The digital switchover planning in the VHF and UHF bands |
The UAE TRA initiated its digital broadcast switch-over plan after the conclusion of the GE06 Agreement. This planning involved the following:
| – | Evaluation of existing penetration of terrestrial analogue TV; |
| – | Requirements of existing analogue TV broadcasters; |
| – | Business modelling for switch over of existing operators to digital broadcast; |
| – | Planning of national frequency layers for the operators with reservation of digital dividend spectrum for mobile service; |
| – | Decision to use VHF TV band III for introducing digital audio broadcasting (DAB); |
| – | Use of SFN as the choice based on planning; |
| – | Decision to adopt more spectrum efficient system (DVB-T2); |
| – | Selection of most viable business model based on number of possible frequency layers; |
| – | Decision to give spectrum rights to broadcasters; |
| – | Dialog with broadcasters to use existing infrastructure to deploy digital transmission; |
| – | Encourage site sharing to operate multiple MUX from the same site to reduce transmission costs; |
| – | Regional harmonization of system and switch-over dates as both will contribute towards economies of scale; |
| – | Regional harmonization for an earlier analogue switch-off date to make the digital dividend band available for mobile at an earlier date. |
