Negotiations on spectrum for public protection and disaster relief (PPDR), which have been continuing within CEPT, the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations, are now beginning to take a more concrete form. For readers who have not been following this committee work closely, some clarification may be useful.

Last summer, ETSI published a System Reference Document (SRDoc) asking for, in total, 2×16 MHz of additional narrowband, wideband and broadband spectrum for current and future PPDR networks. Before the official completion of the document, the requirements set out in it had already been under discussion in the CEPT groups for some time.

To move the issue forward, CEPT arranged a PPDR workshop last March, at which over 100 participants debated the requirements and possible solutions. The main outcome was a common recognition that the need existed.

As a contribution to this debate, the TETRA Association and half a dozen of its members sponsored a research report, ‘Public safety mobile broadband and spectrum needs’, written by Analysys Mason. This report, published just prior to that workshop, can be downloaded from the TETRA Association at www.tetramou.com 

Priorities

At the September project team and working group meetings, the work priorities were then amended as follows:

• a harmonized 2×1·5 MHz capacity increase within the 380–430 MHz band to ease congested areas in current national networks;
• a harmonized 2×3 MHz capacity addition to enable wideband/high-speed data extensions in the range 410–470 MHz;
• continued studies to identify a future broadband allocation.

The narrowband addition target is actually less than the ETSI SRDoc proposed, but it seemed to be sufficient for the network operators. The CEPT project team also launched an internal questionnaire to verify the actual availability of radio channels around 400 MHz. Responses to this should have been collated by late November. 

Meanwhile the Law Enforcement Working Party (a radiocommunications experts’ group) of the European Council developed its own input and proposals for the same purposes, resulting in a request for – 

• the harmonized 2×1·5 MHz addition inside the 380–400 MHz band to be given priority, to avoid extra costs in network extensions;
• the harmonized 2×3 MHz wideband addition to be preferably inside the 410–430 MHz band, to minimize TEDS upgrade costs; 
• harmonized broadband frequencies to be allocated according to need.

Seeking solutions

The law enforcement radio experts are not the only ones producing contributions to this process. The German Ministries of the Interior and Economics & Industry have been working this year to produce their own analysis of the PPDR spectrum needs and potential solutions. The needs report by the MoI has already been published and a techno-economic report by the MoEI was expected to be presented to the plenary meeting of the ECC in the second week of November. The conclusions of that report will no doubt be read very carefully in the groups working on the issue. 

What will happen next is that the CEPT project team (called PT FM38, for the information of readers who love abbreviations) will meet in mid-December to review the questionnaire responses plus other inputs and to determine the next steps of work. What the next steps may be will largely depend on how comprehensive are the answers received in response to the questionnaire. We shall know the final outcome of the ECC winter meeting round in early February.

Note that the project team work in CEPT is transparent: its working documents are publicly available at www.ero.dk and practically any interested stakeholder can provide input. 

PPDR in the EU

The issue of securing sufficient spectrum access to emergency services is no longer only a matter for the radio regulators and their cooperation mechanisms – it has also entered EU comitology.

When the so-called Telecom Package was adopted in the EU a year ago, the Commission was given a task to prepare bi-annual Radio Spectrum Policy Programmes (RSPP) for the joint approval of the European Parliament and the Council. Recently we have entered a phase in which the first RSPP proposal has been passed to the Parliament and the relevant committees are starting work on it. 

The current proposal clearly indicates that the issue of PPDR radio spectrum has gained visibility and understanding in the Commission. It recognizes that the need for new broadband PPDR spectrum has been demonstrated by studies and will materialize in 5–10 years’ time.
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