European Union deal asks for airwaves clear for 4G until 2013

9th November, 2011 by adina
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Three important European regulatory bodies have agreed to a plan to create free bandwidth for LTE 4G phone networks. The European Commission, European Parliament and states members in the European Council have agreed to set wireless spectrum aside for high-speed mobile networks by the 1st of January 2013. The necessary bandwidth has to be made available by auctioning off access frequencies that are currently used to convey analog TV broadcasts.

Under this deal, countries of the European Union will have to make the 800MHz frequency band free for wireless broadband services before that date. After 2013, but before 2015, mobile data traffic would be assigned at least 1,200MHz. By the 1st of January 2015, the European Commission has to determine if supplementary spectrum would be needed to handle the development of wireless data traffic.

Like in North America, the LTE networks will offer data download speeds reaching 150Mbps, while HSPA and HSPA+ 3G networks very common in the country only provide 7.2Mbps and 21Mbps. Deployment of 4G services has lagged in Europe. In the United States, many carriers are advanced on their way to widespread deployment. For instance, Sprint has plans on offering LTE in 120 cities by the end of next year, and extending it in more than 260 areas, while 250 million people will benefit from it until the end of 2013. Verizon has even more aggressive plans. It intends to cover more than 178 markets by the end of this year. By the end of 2013, its 3G network will be completely overlaid with 4G services.

Another carrier, AT&T, has its own network in five cities.

Regulation of bandwidth in Europe has been, until now, up to each country. The United Kingdom had plans of auctioning up its bandwidth next year, in the spring. The scheduling has however been put of until late next year. Initial deployment of 4G will happen in 2013.


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