Doha: The GSMA and SAMENA (South Asia, Middle East, North Africa) Telecommunications Council has called on governments in the Arab region to work together to secure more new spectrum for mobile to meet long-term demand for mobile broadband services.
According to Cisco1, the Middle East and Africa will have the strongest mobile data traffic growth with a 72 percent average annual growth, increasing 15-fold between 2014 and 2019. The council urged telecoms regulatory authorities to collectively support the allocation of new candidate spectrum bands2 for mobile during International Telecommunication Union (ITU) World Radio Communication Conference (WRC-15) in November.
“Decisive action by governments is required to safeguard the future of mobile broadband and extend operator investment, employment and public revenues into the future,” said Tom Phillips, Chief Regulatory Officer, GSMA.
“Without the allocation of these new spectrum bands to mobile at WRC-15, mobile operators in the Arab states will not have a clear investment path to support sustainable growth in mobile broadband.”
ITU member states have agreed to tackle this challenge at WRC-15. ITU estimates that 1340-1960 MHz will be required by 2020 to meet mobile data traffic demand.
According to Dr Nasser Marafih, Group CEO, Ooredoo, and Chairman of the council: “An international mobile allocation provides a national regulator the flexibility to license additional spectrum for mobile when it is required to meet local market demand. Given that it can take more than a decade to move from the identification of the spectrum to licensing and launch of mobile services, we urge governments and regulators in Arab states to support new mobile bands and plan now to meet mobile data demand for 2020 and beyond.”
At the Arab Spectrum Management Group preparatory meeting for WRC-15, GSMA published a report by Frontier Economics, which highlights economic benefits of reallocating C-band spectrum from satellite to mobile use in Arab states. The report says, using just the lower portion of the C-band (3.4-3.8GHz) for mobile could generate at least $7.6bn for Arab economies. Economic benefits would be about 24 times higher than $316m cost of migrating satellite services to the higher portion of C-band or Ka/Ku bands. To access the report, visit: http://www.gsma.com/spectrum/the-economic-benefits-of-a-c-band-mobile-allocation-in-the-arab-states/
The Peninsula
