Verifying 3G License Coverage Requirements

• In the beginning of the 21’st century, the 3rd generation mobile phone systems, 3G, were introduced all around the world. In most countries, spectrum for this technology was allocated through some kind of licensing procedure. In Europe, the prevailing approach was to allocatespectrum through auctions, a process which led to a situation where the European operators found themselves committed to pay a staggering 130Bilion Euros for their 3G licenses.However, in most European countries, the fee was not the only obligation put on thelicensee: A coverage, “roll-out” requirement was in many cases also connected to the license(Northstream, 2002). Typically, these coverage requirements required that the licenseescover a certain area at a certain point in time after that the licenses had been awarded.In order for the regulators to verify that the licensees had met the coverage requirement and,hence, complied with the regulation, a method for coverage verification was needed. Suchmethods have therefore since then been developed by several European regulators (e.g. PTS2004; ECC 2007). In this book chapter we describe some general underlying consideration for the verification of radio coverage in UMTS systems and in particular we describe the Swedishmethodology developed by the Swedish Telecom regulator Post & Telestyrelsen (PTS).

Ämnesord

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik -- Telekommunikation (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering -- Telecommunications (hsv//eng)

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