The wheels of European legislation have slowly turned, and last week Europe adopted a five-year radio spectrum policy programme, at Parliament’s second reading under the co-decision procedure. Readers will recall that last summer two key issues remained outstanding between the Council of Ministers and Parliament – the date by which the 800 MHz band should be cleared and the minimum amount of spectrum to be made available for mobile broadband.
In the usual European fashion, Parliament prevailed on one issue (at least 1200 MHz to be available for mobile broadband by 2015) and the Council on the other (800 MHz band to be cleared by 2013). Somewhat unusually, this horse-trading has resulted in a very good outcome with spectrum being made available early and in sufficient quantity to place Europe in a strong position globally in the race to enable mobile broadband. Of course, implementation is in the hands of Member States, so it remains to be seen how this will play out in practice.
Meanwhile, over in Geneva, the four yearly world radio conference of the ITU finished on Friday. The provisional final acts are available here, and whilst I’ve not yet had time to review in detail, mobile broadband appeared to do well there as well with press reports that additional spectrum in the 700 MHz band may also be made available.