Innovation often occurs in different places at roughly the same time. Electromagnetic induction, for example, was discovered in both Britain and the US independently in the early 19th century. Frequency-hopping spread spectrum technology was also developed separately by several engineers in the first half of the 20th century, including Austrian-born… Read more...

Auctions may have become the default way to assign spectrum, but the last quarter saw just as many beauty contests. A total of 11,076 MHz of changed or new entries were included in the latest update to the PolicyTracker Spectrum Database (PSD), including an equal number of beauty contests and auctions.… Read more...

This week the FCC announced its plan to publish a Public Notice about implementing emission limits agreed at WRC-19 with respect to licences across the 24.25 - 25.25 GHz range. The spectrum was auctioned in Spring 2019, but later that year the World Radiocommunication Conference established much stricter limits than… Read more...

The latest PolicyTracker Spectrum Database quarterly update includes a spectrum auction that raised more money than any other. The wave of expensive 3G auctions in Europe at the height of the dotcom boom has become the stuff of legend in spectrum policy circles. Germany’s 2000 auction of the 2.1 GHz… Read more...

Many think of cold, snow-covered Finland and warm, sunny Italy as very different countries. Perhaps it is not surprising that their spectrum auctions have produced very different outcomes. Over the years, the home of Nokia has gained a reputation for carrying out affordable and exemplary spectrum assignments. When Finnish incumbent… Read more...

Controversy, compromise, and consensus: the latest World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-19) at Sharm el-Sheikh had it all. Credit must go to the 3400 delegates from 165 ITU member states for their efforts not just over the four weeks of the conference, but throughout the preceding four years of preparatory studies and… Read more...

The statistics would suggest so. A new report from the European Commission’s 5G Observatory says that Italy is the only country in the 27-member European Union that has assigned spectrum in the 26 GHz band. Compare that with Asia, where South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan have awarded 26… Read more...

Watch any presentation made by a government official from an Asian country and 5G sounds tantalising.  Their powerpoint slides frequently use terms like "industrial revolution 4.0" and explain how their country will be a prime beneficiary from early adoption as applications such as smart factories powered by mmWave band-based networks… Read more...

Earlier this month, the Electronic Communications Committee (ECC) officially agreed on the technical conditions to harmonise the 26 GHz band (24.25–27.5 GHz) in Europe for 5G. And yet a growing number of stakeholders have been raising concerns about the difficulties of manufacturing chips that can operate on 26.5 GHz frequencies.… Read more...

Over the past few months we have reported on the discussions about protecting earth observation services in 24 GHz against interference from 5G in 26 GHz. The latter is one of the most widely-supported 5G candidate bands under discussion at WRC-19 and has been identified as a 5G pioneer band… Read more...