Industry Seeks EU Regulation of UWB

Europe is trying to establish safeguards for UWB’s advent, said Fatih Yurdal, who heads up frequency management and regulatory affairs for the European Radiocommunications Office (ERO). The ERO operates under the aegis of the European Communications Committee (ECC) of the Conference of Postal & Telecom Administrations (CEPT). An ECC task group, TG3, works on UWB, Yurdal said. It’s divided into 3 subcommittees, he said, one of which handles questions of UWB compatibility with existing services. That’s the key issue in Europe, Yurdal said.

Spectrum is limited, and UWB services would have to share frequencies with services already authorized, Yurdal said. In Europe, UWB is allowed on the basis of “unprotected interference,” he said. It doesn’t need official recognition to use the same frequency band as an existing, approved service, but can’t interfere with such services or complain of interference from them.

Some industry sectors want frequency bands assigned to UWB on an equal footing with the other services, so they could complain about interference or cause interference themselves, Yurdal said. But many countries oppose the idea, he said.

Yurdal is a member of the work group of TG3 that deals with frequency management frameworks - how to regulate usage to constrain UWB transmission while not limiting it unnecessarily. The thinking so far is that unlicensed UWB will be allowed in some cases for practical reasons: “There’s no commercial system yet” in Europe. It’s not clear yet, Yurdal said, whether UWB systems will be allowed to upgrade on a shared basis with existing services or assigned some small band exclusively for UWB.

Most European Union countries are conducting consultations on UWB, Yurdal said. The EC favors UWB, he said, but won’t establish regulations before CEPT issues its report setting out recommendations for conditions, regulations and frequency assignments. That report is due to the EC by April, he said, after which the Commission will decide on UWB regulatory action. Yurdal said he expects UWB introduction in Europe this year.

Industry Wants UWB Regulation

Europe is “debate central” for the concept of UWB, said Jon Adams, chmn. of the UWB Forum Interoperability Committee. The industry forum was founded last year to make the “UWB future now,” its website says. Several factions are interested in rolling out UWB, Adams said, but many others are worried UWB will harm their services. It’s unclear how it will settle out, he said, but the industry needs a uniform regulatory environment. The forum is working with many of the major European players most concerned about UWB - the telcos, he said. The forum provides hardware to allow people to do their own emissions, interference and performance testing, to see how UWB works, Adams said.

In the U.S., the FCC gave unlicensed UWB services permission in 2002 to co-exist with licensed services, Adams said. Since then, he said, the FCC’s ruling has been affirmed twice despite numerous filings from interested parties, which now appear less concerned about UWB. There’s also strong interest in the technology in China, Korea and Japan, he said. But “the jury’s still out in some ways” because there aren’t many UWB products available, Adams said. And, he said, UWB isn’t high among EU priorities. Trying to harmonize 25 countries’ radio regulations “has been a huge challenge,” he said.

Industry is “clearly interested in getting regulation” on UWB because it’s a valuable technology, said Stephen Wood, a board member of the WiMedia Alliance, a group that wants to drive development of industry-based protocols for sharing the UWB spectrum -- and that competes to some extent with the UWB Forum. However, he said, within the industry there’s concern that if the EU doesn’t regulate UWB soon, by default the FCC will regulate the technology.

The FCC made a judgment call to allow UWB to operate at a level below that now used by inadvertent emitters, Wood said, and WiMedia thinks that’s not conservative enough. WiMedia wants to cut the chances for interference, he said, by dropping out-of-band emissions, taking steps to ensure that UWB can’t be used for video applications, and avoiding UWB in radioastronomy.

The opposition to UWB from various sectors in Europe isn’t a surprise, Wood said. The same thing happened in the U.S. when the FCC was debating what to do about UWB, he said. Incumbents are naturally worried about the new service, he said, because the existing system serves them well. “If it appears to cause any interference in the area, kill it,” Wood said, describing incumbents’ view. Europe seems to have zero tolerance for interference, and EU regulators recognize the need to consider other regulatory models for the future, he said.

There’s a tendency to think of UWB as a “U.S. thing we're trying to export to the rest of the world,” Wood said. In fact, he said, several major European multinational players are interested in UWB. The U.S. simply “got the opportunity to move first,” he said.

Telco Concerns

The European Telecom Network Operators’ Assn. (ETNO) is following the UWB issue closely because its members operate “a significant number of radio services within the frequency ranges envisaged for the deployment of UWB applications,” a spokesman said. Preliminary results in CEPT and the ITU “have proven the high degree of potential interference,” which could affect the quality of existing services and create “serious trouble for users in a large range of e-communications services,” the spokesman said.

The ECC recently adopted a draft report on protection requirements of radiocommunications systems below 10.6 GHz from generic UWB applications. The report found that limits fixed by the FCC may not protect existing radio services, the ETNO spokesman said. ETNO “is of the opinion that UWB applications to be operated with high numbers of devices should be implemented in the frequency range where interference is less likely (above 6 GHz)” to ensure interference-free operation of existing services and to allow unhampered development of innovative radio applications, the spokesman said.

UWB in the U.K.

In the U.K., the Office of Communications (Ofcom) is expected to launch a consultation on UWB very soon. The regulator commissioned a report from Mason Communications on the economic benefits of introducing UWB in the U.K. A revised version of that report was supposed to be unveiled in Nov., but because of the “sensitivities” surrounding UWB its release was delayed, a knowledgeable industry source said. The authors wouldn’t discuss the report’s details, but said publication on Ofcom’s Web site is due “any day now,” a Mason source said. Ofcom didn’t return a call seeking information.

In Nov., Ofcom published a strategic review of spectrum management in the U.K. The document lists 4 recommendations aimed at increasing demand for spectrum: (1) Letting the market decide the best use for new spectrum allocations. (2) Allowing spectrum trading and liberalization. (3) Defining the rights of spectrum users. (4) Increasing the amount of license-exempt spectrum to allow businesses to develop and market new technologies and services without the need for a license. While this consultation is separate from the one on UWB, the industry source said, its results could be relevant to UWB as well as to other new technologies.

The original Mason Communications report to Ofcom (now being revised) recommended the imposition of temporary UWB rules, which Wood said is a good idea because it will allow regulators to get real-world experience with the new technology. The first version of the Mason report was “a nice forward movement,” he said.

UWB is on the agenda of several upcoming European conferences. WiMedia is the lead sponsor of Ultrawideband Europe, a March 10-11 conference in London. And the 12th CEPT European Electronic Communications Regulatory Forum in April includes a UWB session. - Dugie Standeford