U.S. PLAYING DEFENSE AT ITU ON ULTRA-WIDEBAND

“There seems to be a growing concern in the international forum that UWB is going to cause interference with a lot of existing services,” one industry source said: “The papers filed thus far, a lot of them say that. A lot of them say that the mask adopted by the FCC is insufficient to protect existing services.” A source representing spectrum incumbents concerned about UWB emissions noted: “The U.S. does not want this on WRC agenda… At every meeting someone has raised the ugly head of making it an agenda item.”

Gary Anderson, CEO of Uraxs Communications and chmn. of the meeting’s organizing committee, told us Fri. the conference will provide a showcase for UWB and the new devices going on the market. He noted that so far the U.S. is the only nation in the world to develop UWB rules that address how to use the devices without interfering with other spectrum users.

“The major dynamic we want to impress on the world is what we've done in the past and what we want to do in the future lays the groundwork for large-scale adoption of this technology,” Anderson said. “We are hoping the rest of the world will adopt our approach… while we push the envelope to stay on the cutting edge of development.”

Giving delegates a chance to see UWB equipment will be critical, Anderson said. “Up until now we're very short of real world products and devices that are able to prove the case,” he said: “That’s one of the main points of the meeting. Hopefully we can get some of the equipment that people are experimenting with out in the open.”

Anderson said the U.S. will work against UWB becoming part of the WRC agenda at any point. “Considering some of the opposition that comes out of Europe it’s always going to be a possibility,” he said. “We'll do everything we can to suppress that. We don’t want to regulate this technology. We don’t want to retard its development or growth. We strongly feel that our approach is very conservative and worthy of global development.”

The U.S. must share its vision of the benefits of UWB with the rest of the world at the conference, said the FCC Office of Engineering & Technology’s Ron Chase, chmn. of USTR 1/8. “Because it was so controversial over here that was reflected in the way Europeans see this,” he said: “In Europe they don’t recognize short-range devices as such. We're trying to point out this is how we did it here. You can have the advantage of UWB over there too.”

Several European administrations raised concerns at the task group meeting last year in Geneva about the potential impact of UWB on IMT-2000 systems, or the European version of 3G wireless. Those questions remain, sources said. Many of the same groups that raised objections during the FCC and NTIA consideration of UWB commercial applications had been raising concerns as the ITU examines the issue.

One potential complication this time around is that the FCC is preparing its 2nd Report and Order on UWB, building on the first report published in April 2002. Sources said if the report is released during the conference it could slow work as delegates read the document. “I hope it doesn’t,” one delegate said: “Then everyone is going to say we've got to go read the 2nd report and order unless it means nothing… It takes a while for something like that to be digested.”

Another complication is the task force is meeting outside of the ITU base of Geneva. That has caused some problems for U.S. organizers in this era of tighter security. An organizer of the conference said delegates from Iran, China and other countries are encountering difficulty getting visas to enter the U.S. before the meeting. In the case of China, for example, a potential manufacturer nation of UWB devices, several delegates have been cleared but at least one has been denied entry. Anderson said he has “made phone calls and written letters. It’s beyond my control [but] the countries that are having trouble getting here don’t have a huge vested interest or influence on the end result.”

The meeting in Boston is the 3rd of the task group. A 4th meeting has been scheduled for Oct. in Geneva. A 5th is considered likely a year from now. The group is specifically assigned to look at 2 questions -- compatibility between UWB devices and radiocommunication services, and the spectrum management framework related to the introduction of UWB devices.

Much of the work of the group is conducted in 4 smaller working groups. The first looks at UWB characteristics, the nature of the devices and how they work. A 2nd is looking at UWB measurements. But the 2 groups likely to get the most attention will look at whether UWB can be authorized by the ITU under the current rules and at the compatability of UWB devices with other users of the spectrum.

Among the questions the larger group is to examine are: (1) The effects of emissions from a single UWB device, as well as the aggregate effect of emissions from multiple UWB devices, on the existing electromagnetic environment. (2) The response of non-UWB receivers to UWB emissions, as the parameters of UWB devices become known. (3) Requirements to ensure that devices using UWB technology won’t cause harmful interference to the radiocommunication services. (4) The methodology that should be used to compute the aggregate effect of emissions from UWB devices.