Lisbon hosted last 22-23 January the 10th meeting of project team 42 (PT 42) of the Spectrum Engineering working group (WG SE), chaired by Stephen Bond of Ofcom. PT 42 is responsible for technical issues concerning the introduction of flexible spectrum use in the bands known as flexible bands (862-870 MHz, 1785-1805 MHz and 57-59 GHz were the bands originally identified by the Frequency Management working group (WG FM), but the first band was excluded as it did not fit the definition of Report 80 of the Electronic Communications Committee (ECC)) and WAPECS (Wireless Access Policy for Electronic Communication Services) (470-862 MHz, 880-915 MHz/925-960 MHz, 1710-1785 MHz/1805-1880 MHz, 1900-1980 MHz/ 2010-2025 MHz/ 2110-2170 MHz, 2.5-2.69 GHz and 3.4-3.8 GHz). The response to the WAPECS mandate of the European Commission (EC) was delivered in December 2007, and was in CEPT public consultation until last 19 February. PT 42 is thus ready to go ahead with the Flexible Bands study.
Regarding the 57-59 GHz and 1785-1807 MHz bands, it was decided that to move forward with the study of same it would be necessary to study the scope of work with WG SE and WG FM, specifically to make it clear that PT 42 should not limit the flexible bands concept to ECC Report 80, but rather study a more far-reaching concept of flexible band usage. As for the 862-870 MHz band, a working document was produced containing the most relevant studies on same. Also studied were the comments made by WG FM last year, emphasising the potential overlap with the work of PT 24; it was decided that this point would be raised at the next WG SE meeting.
The next meeting will be held in the first week of March, where priority will be given to examining comments from the CEPT public consultation on Report 19 (reply to the WAPECS mandate). Note also that this 12th group meeting will be co-ordinated with PT 24 in order to try to hold a joint meeting, giving priority to the 862-870 MHz band.
