CEPT
ECC
Electronic Communications Committee
FM(13)052
Working Group FM
76th Meeting
Warsaw, 4 – 8 February 2013
Date issued:
01 February 2013
Source:
Germany
Broadband DA2GC and future use of unpaired terrestrial 2 GHz bands
(related to documents FM(13)038 and FM(13)039)
Subject:
Group membership required to read? (Y/N)
N
Summary:
Germany is of the opinion that the deployment of a CEPT-wide DA2GC system would be
beneficial for European society and would support the aims of the Digital Agenda of the European
Commission to provide broadband access to European citizens everywhere at any time. In this
context the work of FM48 and SE44 is essential and should be continued to enable a spectrum
designation for BDA2GC as soon as possible.
Proposal:
Germany invites WGFM to consider the German responses to the input documents from Sweden
on BDA2GC work (Doc FM(13)038) as well as on the unpaired 2 GHz bands in Doc FM(13)039.
Background:
At the WG FM meeting in Bern in April 2012 Sweden expressed its concerns regarding the work
in FM PT48 on BDA2GC with respect to potential licensing and coordination problems.
Furthermore, Sweden highlighted a number of drawbacks concerning the system in general.
Sweden reiterates its previous comments and questions the value of the on-going work in FM48
regarding BDA2GC. Sweden proposes in Doc FM(13)038 that a fixed deadline for the project
team is set and that WG FM provides guidelines for the Report.
In addition Sweden in Doc FM(13)039 states that - taking into account licence expiration dates of
2025 - current discussions on future usages of the unpaired terrestrial 2 GHz bands would be
premature.
Germany is of the opinion that the deployment of a DA2GC system would be beneficial for
European broadband society and would support the aims of the Digital Agenda of the European
Commission to provide broadband access to European citizens everywhere and every time. In this
context the work of FM48 and SE44 is essential and should be continued to enable a spectrum
designation for BDA2GC as soon as possible.
Germany would like to respond to the arguments put forward by Sweden (FM(13)038) as
follows:
Sweden: The (B)DA2GC concept is based on a harmonised solution for a pan-European
(B)DA2GC service. Licensing is however national responsibility which will probably, not the least
due to legacies, lead to fragmentation and uncertainties.
Response:
-
According to its Terms of Reference the ECC shall harmonise within CEPT the efficient use of
radio spectrum so as to satisfy the requirements of users and industry. DA2GC is expected to
become a pan-European service and harmonisation of spectrum is essential to operate such a
system. In order to foster the implementation of BDA2GC, PT FM48 already concluded that
after spectrum designation at CEPT level has been achieved support from the European
Commission would be required to establish a European spectrum harmonisation. With such a
combined approach (ECC Decision and EC Decision) legal uncertainties would be limited.
Sweden: (B)DA2GC has a very weak business case. It is difficult to calculate the profitability for the
systems studied and the basis for them are that the frequencies should be assigned with no cost.
Even though similar systems exist in US and are working well from a technical point of view, it is
understood that there are economic problems despite the homogenous market in mainland US.
Response:
-
There are three DA2G system proposals being discussed in FM48: Two systems that intend to
operate in the ISM band at 5.8 GHz because this ISM band is globally available, access is
regarded to be easy and licensing costs to be low. The proponents of the system according to
ETSI TR 101 599 are looking for spectrum which can preferably be exempted from individual
licences or lightly licensed; some drops in data rate and even very occasional brief outages
would then be acceptable, if this were necessary to ensure compatibility with other services,
bearing in mind the complex sharing situation in the 5.8 GHz band.
-
The system description as provided in ETSI TR 103 054 is proposing a different DA2G
approach, offering QoS with reliable data speeds. Such a system needs a dedicated and
licensed frequency band. The business case has been studied thoroughly by the proponents of
this system (Deutsche Telekom AG and Alcatel-Lucent) and it is stable. This includes
investments to provide service to about 300 mio passengers/year in European airspace
including licensing fees.
-
Currently there is a huge interest from airlines in a BDA2GC system in Europe which was also
reflected in the quotations from participants at the demo flight in October 2012 (see document
INFO 001).
Sweden: The (B)DA2GC systems are not expected to fulfil the airlines’ expectations of high
capacity broadband services.
Response:
-
Already several airlines stated their interest in the DA2GC solution towards WG FM. With the
bandwidth demand of 2x10 MHz FDD or 20 MHz TDD for initial deployment as discussed
within CEPT a data rate per aircraft can be provided that satisfies the expectations of the
airlines. Satellite systems will not provide higher data rates as the large beam sizes result in a
higher number of aircraft to be accessed in parallel compared to the BDA2GC cells.
Sweden: Many ECC countries, including Sweden, will be in the periphery of the service area with
the terrestrial solution under discussion in FM PT48.
Response:
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-
The final coverage area for BDA2GC will depend on the demand put forward by the airlines.
Main flight routes of the participating airlines will be covered at the system roll-out to be further
enhanced during operation. The coverage of Sweden will finally depend on the usage rate of
flight routes over its territory. In general DA2GC deployment will be flexible according to
demand by airline as well as passengers.
Sweden: Scarce spectrum resources should not be used for niche market systems in an ineffective
way, in this case for a niche market for a mobile application.
Response:
-
The DA2G service will be offered to some 300 million passengers per year travelling in
commercial airplanes all over Europe. It is a valuable extension for terrestrial mobile broadband
networks based on WLAN and IMT technologies. The DA2G application itself is not a high
density service like terrestrial IMT services but an auxiliary application to connect IMT based
high density services to airplanes.
-
Spectrum scarcity is not an issue just for Europe, but also for other parts of the world.
Nevertheless BDA2GC systems are deployed or planned in e.g. North America and China.
Sweden: Communication to the aircraft is already achieved via satellite. Therefore the (B)DA2GC
service in its expected performance will offer no added value.
Response:
-
Almost all European airlines are intending to offer communications services to their passengers
during continental flights as soon as possible. Many of the airlines are following the work on
BDA2GC in CEPT with strong interest because of the expected lower cost for aircraft
installations and maintenance compared to satellite solutions. Another important advantage for
BDA2GC concerning user experience is the low latency as also demonstrated during the demo
flight in October 2012 (see document INFO 001). Latency is seen as key differentiation criteria
of BDA2GC against satellite based solutions. Low latencies serve as enablers for new
services, in particular real-time interactive services such as unified communication (incl. voice).
However, even web browsing particularly benefits from low latency solutions. 3GPP particularly
focused on improved user experience within LTE evolution requiring an end-to-end round trip
time latency performance in the range 20-30ms for a good web browsing experience (see Doc
3GPP TSG-RAN WG2 Meeting #69bisR2-101984). While BDA2GC connections contribute to
the latency budget with less than 1 ms (one way) whereas geostationary satellite links require
roughly 240 ms (one way, signal propagation delay between transmitting and receiving
antennas). For two-way communication a satellite link requires at least 480 ms compared to
2 ms for BDA2GC. Thus satellite links are not fulfilling the latency requirements for many
applications.
-
The characteristics of the satellite and the BDA2GC approach (according to ETSI TR 103 054)
to provide broadband services to airplanes are listed below and show some remarkable
advantages for the terrestrial BDA2GC system:
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Sweden: There is no evident progress in the work and no consensus on the report content so far.
Response:
-
Taking into account the complexity of the issue progress in FM48 and SE44 has not been slow.
-
The content of the draft ECC Report was agreed in PT FM48 and endorsed by WG FM. Further
work is depending on the results of the compatibility studies in SE44.
Sweden: Very few administrations participate in the project team (five administrations in the
meetings in May 2012 and January 2013 respectively). The work might therefore be questioned
and render limited support in WG FM. A similar tendency can be seen in the work performed in SE
PT44, which is contributing to FM PT48.
Response:
- Participation of administrations is not very high in various project teams. In the last SE PT 44
meeting seven administrations were represented. However, there is always the possibility to
provide guidance from the parental groups to the project teams. Usually around 30
administrations take part in WG FM meetings.
- Additionally, the developments regarding the future use of the band 1452-1492 MHz have to
be taken into account. Broadband DA2GC is no longer an applicant for that band. However,
WG FM had already concluded in its 72nd meeting in Miesbach (see FM(11)131, AI 5.12, par.
16, page 30): “… the WG FM Chairman proposed to recall in the meeting Minutes the relevant
part of document FM(11)062 Annex 18: Finally, the spectrum requirements for the applications
not retained to be used in the L band should be recognized and duly considered by WG FM
and it will be important that the work of FM45, FM48 and FM49 takes account of this situation.
The overall aim of WG FM is to manage the work to find a solution which satisfies all the
requirements as far as possible.”
Remarks regarding the unpaired terrestrial 2 GHz bands (FM(13)039):
Regarding the unpaired terrestrial 2 GHz bands, Germany supports the measures taken by the
Commission and CEPT regarding a re-designation to alternative usages.
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The results of the work done by PT1, the 2 GHz Correspondence Group in WGFM as well as the
consultation on the Commission Decision on the UMTS bands have shown clearly that
administrations and radio users see a requirement to discuss the future of the 2 GHz unpaired
bands which are unused throughout Europe. Thus Germany supports the Mandate to CEPT
provided by the Commission regarding the 2 GHz unpaired bands as well as the work in FM48 and
SE44 concerning the compatibility of BDA2GC and other services in adjacent bands.
Taking into account current discussions in preparation of WRC-15 to identify new frequency bands
for cellular broadband applications Germany is optimistic concerning the cooperation of current
IMT licensees to discuss future applications in the 2 GHz unpaired bands.
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