The 14th meeting of the Civil/Military Spectrum Panel (C3B CaP3) took place last 30-31 May at NATO’s new headquarters in Brussels, co-chaired by Gerard Elzinga (NATO C3 staff) and Didier Chauveau (Agence Nationale des Fréquences (ANFR), France). Portugal was represented by Jaime Barreira (Armed Forces General Staff) and Cristina Reis (ANACOM).
In the scope of the Atlantic Alliance’s defence capabilities, C3B CaP3 is responsible for providing sufficient spectrum resources to: (i) ensure that NATO military forces can access enough spectrum to fulfil their mission; (ii) harmonise military use of radio frequencies among the NATO allies; and (iii) cooperate with countries of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC)/Partnership for Peace (PfP) with a view to achieving identical radio spectrum use.
Various subjects were debated, of which the following points stand out:
1. World radiocommunication conferences
In the scope of preparations for the 2019 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-19), the NATO position proposals submitted to C3B CaP3 for each of the WRC-19 agenda points were reviewed and agreed on. After fulfilling the silence procedure, the resulting document will be disclosed by the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) and the Inter-American Telecommunications Commission (CITEL);
2. Civil/military spectrum sharing
The need to protect NATO radars operating below 3400 MHz was debated at length. Indeed, the 2900-3400 MHz range is designated in the NATO Joint Civil/Military Frequency Agreement (NJFA) as vital and having very important military uses for the alliance, whereby it was concluded that any decision on establishing technical conditions above that limit, namely for 5G in the 3400-3800 MHz range, requires consideration of relevant protection requisites to prevent impact/interference in alliance radars operating in the 2900-3400 MHz range;
3. 960-1164 MHz range
Attention was called to the problem concerning ongoing CEPT studies meant to verify the viability of sharing the 960-1164 MHz band between aeronautic services and low-power programme-making and special events (PMSE) equipment. A first internal CEPT report is ready; completion of the technical studies is awaited so that a respective conclusion can be drawn (May 2020). It was highlighted that various countries are in favour of interrupting the technical studies; some administrations also defend their continuation so that an informed decision on the issue can eventually be made.
Note that the 960-1164 band is used globally by various critical systems installed in aircraft, and is also shared with military applications.
The group’s next meeting in civil/military session should take place on 14-15 November 2018 (to be confirmed).
