One of the pleasures of reporting on spectrum is that it gives you the opportunity to see the technologies of the future. Spectrum managers were dealing with mega-constellations and 5G, or reading about them in PolicyTracker, years before they they were discussed in the mainstream press. But as well as… Read more...

For the past quarter century, Europe’s approach to spectrum has been founded on the belief in auctions. But this week we reported on a Paris seminar which showed that industry is open to new approaches.  Being innovation-led is a laudable goal. The UK, for example, has recently debated whether it would… Read more...

PolicyTracker classifies 5G bands as first tier, second tier, third tier and experimental based on the likely deployment timescale, within five years being the quickest. Today we are concentrating on the experimental category. The enormous practical difficulties of providing services even in the lower reaches of mmWave were highlighted this… Read more...

Although 26 GHz is a long term prospect for the development of new mobile services in Europe, the region’s immediate hopes are pinned on two bands: 700 MHz and 3.5 GHz. Read more...

When the Commission tried to encourage a pan-European paging market by setting aside the 169.4-169.8 MHz under the European Radio Messaging System, or ERMES, how could they have known that SMS was about to take off. The spectrum stayed very much set-aside for about 15 years while the legislative process… Read more...