New dossier on spectrum policy in the European Union

The European Union plays a vital role in spectrum harmonisation for its member states. Our new dossier shows that while most decisions remain in the hands of national authorities, Brussels develops regulations, common technical rules and long-term strategies that help them to make optimal use of available spectrum resources.

This can be seen in the ongoing harmonisation efforts for the technical rules for local mobile networks in the 3.8—4.2 GHz band, which should make it easier for more such networks to be deployed throughout the EU.

The EU’s other main spectrum harmonisation effort at the moment concerns the upper 6 GHz band (6425—7125 MHz). It has been allocated for RLAN (WiFi) in some jurisdictions around the world and to MFCN (mobile) in others, but the EU wants a hybrid solution that would enable both services to use the band.

There is some disagreement about this among EU member states, with some (such as the UK) wanting to proceed faster than others (such as France).

For many years, EU regulators have aspired to create a spectrum licensing framework that could serve all member states, with assignments being made in every country at the same time, under the same terms, with licences lasting the same number of years. Such a situation is unlikely ever to arise, but there have been renewed efforts in the past year to move in this direction.

Our EU dossier is now available to Spectrum Research Service subscribers.

• EU policy framework
• Pan-EU spectrum regulation
• EU harmonisation efforts