Asia-Pacific Telecommunity band plan
1998 - Sprint Corporation announces[11] that it will offer an advanced packet-switching network to simultaneously send voice, data, and video down a single phone line, for the first time in history.
2000 – ITU reports 400 mln internet users in the world[19] 2001 – Wikipedia goes online and rapidly gains popularity 2001 – The first commercial 3G network using the WCDMA technology is launched in Japan by NTT DoCoMo[20] 2002 – Research in Motion (RIM) releases its first Blackberry smartphone[21] 2003 – EDGE technology (also referred to as 2.75G) is deployed for the first time in the US by Cingular (now – AT&T) permitting data transmission with a theoretical maximum bitrate of 384 kbit/s[22] 2005 - Nokia announces the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, the first tablet to appear on the market[23] 2007 – 3G networks worldwide reach 295 million subscribers (9% of the total worldwide subscriber base)[20] 2007 – Apple Inc. announces the iPhone, a product that is designed to unleash the potential of mobile internet[26][promotion?]
By the end of the year, there are twice as many mobile broadband as fixed broadband subscriptions[37] 2011 - Worldwide 3G coverage reaches 45% of the population[37] July 2012 - approximately 10.5% of all Web traffic occurs through mobile devices (up from 4% in December 2010)[39] September 2012 – Apple releases iPhone 5[40] that supports LTE networks in the 700 MHz band (only according to the US band plan).
For the overall success of the creation of the harmonized band plan, high degree of cooperation among industry stakeholders (governments, vendors, operators, associations, and other) was key.
As a result, the APT band plan is very well-thought from the technical point of view and is able to meet modern and future requirements by networks, user equipment and growing demand of connectivity.
On the contrary, in the US band plan, there are two or three different device ecosystems which translate to non-interoperability within the country, and severe limitations (most probably, practically unavailability) of international roaming.
Wider channel sizes are crucially important for the networks of the nearest future because of the growth of mobile data and projected capacity demand.
Due to this fact, the ecosystem of this band plan is relatively well-developed with two large networks already operating commercially and with a number of user devices existing on the market.
Another existing challenge is the advancement of its own ecosystem, which in turn depends on equipment vendors: terminal devices manufacturers (HTC, Apple, Samsung, Nokia, etc.
(It should be said, however, that in a number cases the TDD configuration proves to have certain advantages, such as larger capacity to bear with downlink disproportionately exceeding the uplink data transmission).
In the APT 700 FDD configuration, two overlapping duplexers are required to cover the entire band due to the limitations by current filter technologies.
Presence of both configurations would lead to less significant economies of scale for each type of the equipment and to distortions in the economic valuation of different parts of the spectrum in the 700 MHz band.
Although the dynamics of the market such as the ever-increasing complexity of chipsets, multi-band support by chip manufacturers demonstrate that the most likely outcome is the inclusion of both duplexers in all devices.
As a result of these peculiarities of segmentation, block A of the lower 700 MHz band is practically not used due to interference from TV Channel 51.
European countries, which still continue have a high occupancy of broadcasting services in the 700 MHz band that have been granted a period until 2015 to convert to digital.
It appears that since the APT segmentation is based on two overlapping duplexers of 30+30 MHz, it fits perfectly in the European scheme, as shown on the graph below.
This extent of harmonization will lead to economies of scale which will in turn drag down the prices of terminals, speed up adoption of smart devices and finally convert to socio-economic benefits.
That also proves that the equipment manufacturers are in the process of the commercialization of UE and network elements driven by the creation of significant market by the APT band plan.
[70] Due to economies of scale that are being created by the APT band plan, the price of smart devices could then lower down significantly.
A significant number of countries have already adopted the APT segmentation scheme: Australia, India, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Taiwan, and Tonga in Asia; and Brazil, Costa-Rica, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Ecuador, Panama and Argentina in Latin America.
In countries such as Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru and a few others it is scheduled to be adopted in the nearest future.
That, in turn, leads to lower prices for the equipment thus increasing the adoption of the technology and having a direct and indirect impact on the economic growth.
According to the joint study of the GSMA and the Boston Consulting Group, the biggest socio-economic benefits are likely to arise by allocating the 700 MHz band to mobile services.
Overall, the greater economies of scale are, the lesser end user prices will be established and the vaster will be the adoption of the technology that translates to socio-economic benefits.
However, the recent developments around the propagation of the APT band plan across Asia-Pacific region, Latin America, and thanks to the compatibility of the European frequency arrangements, as well as the situation in Africa and Middle East, project confidence that a far bigger market is being created worldwide.
For the moment, combined markets of Australia, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore and South Korea add up to around 2 billion 100 million people.
The logical outcome of the ongoing regional harmonization process in Americas will be the resulting market of an order of 400 million consumers.
Given the size of the potential market that is on the verge of being created, the socio-economic benefits caused by booming access and adoption of the mobile internet by all social layers of population and driven by rocketing penetration of smart devices will be overwhelming and transformational.
Technical aspects of the standard of APT segmentation of the 700 MHz band 3GPP members who supported and contributed to this work include: Alcatel-Lucent, CATT, China Mobile, Ericsson, ETRI, HiSilicon, Huawei, KDDI, KT Corporation, LG Electronics Inc., LG-Ericsson Co. Ltd., Motorola Mobility, NII Holdings, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks, NTT DOCOMO, Qualcomm Inc., Samsung, ST-Ericsson, Telefónica S.A., Vodafone, ZTE.
Radio waves, due to its nature and physics, can cause harmful interference to networks and equipment operating in a different band plan, (i.e. in neighboring countries).
