The Situation in the Early 1980s: A Spectrum Allocation Opens the Possibility to Overcome the European Patchwork of Incompatible Systems At the World Administrative Radio Conference in 1979 (WARC ’79), a decision was taken to set aside a block of radio spectrum in the 900 MHz range for use in land mobile communication systems in Zone 1, which in the terminology of the Radio Regulations means Europe. Beyond this, little was said about how the spectrum should be used, such as the allocation to public systems versus private ones | GSM and UMTS The Creation of Global Mobile Communication Edited by Friedhelm Hillebrand Copyright 2001 John Wiley Sons Ltd ISBNs 0-470-84322-5 Hardback 0-470-845546 Electronic Chapter 2 The Agreement on the Concepts and the Basic Parameters of the GSM Standard mid-1982 to mid-1987 Section 1 The Market Fragmentation in Europe and the CEPT Initiatives in 1982 Thomas Haug1 The Situation in the Early 1980s A Spectrum Allocation Opens the Possibility to Overcome the European Patchwork of Incompatible Systems At the World Administrative Radio Conference in 1979 WARC 79 a decision was taken to set aside a block of radio spectrum in the 900 MHz range for use in land mobile communication systems in Zone 1 which in the terminology of the Radio Regulations means Europe. Beyond this little was said about how the spectrum should be used such as the allocation to public systems versus private ones. The European telecommunications market was for a long time badly fragmented. In an attempt to improve the situation the organisation of 26 PTT Administrations of Western Europe and a few other countries Conference Européenne des Postes et Telecommunications abbreviated CEPT was since 1959 actively engaged in standardisation of telecommunications but the progress was often hampered by differences in policy in the member countries. It is however of interest to note that contrary to what is often assumed by observers outside the PTTs CEPT was not at all a purely regulatory body but dealt extensively with technical issues in many fields and had for that purpose set up a large number of working groups. In 1989 the technical specification work was transferred to the then newly created European Telecommunication Specification Institute ETSI . Around 1980 the European situation in mobile communications was that a number of mutually incompatible mobile systems were in operation or in preparation. The lack of 1 The views expressed in this sectiom are those of the author and do not .
