The second Apex Forum of the year was held on April 24, 2004 at IETE Delton Hall on the ever-important topic of “Optimal Utilization of National Frequency Spectrum”. Frequency Spectrum is a fixed resource, which is used for operation of every wireless communication channel. Shri P N Chopra, Convenor of the Apex Forum while welcoming the distinguished gathering of experts and audience said that telecommunications is a key factor in the development of social, economic, commercial and cultural activities of a country. He enumerated the various facilities, which use wireless and stated that modern trend is towards mobility for which radio frequency spectrum is a resource. He said growth of wireless telecommunications depends on availability and efficient management of frequency spectrum and expressed that the panelists would enlighten the audience with their expert views on utilization and management of the same.
Prof K K Aggarwal President, IETE presided over the function. Welcome address was delivered by Lt Gen (Retd) D P Sehgal, PVSM, AVSM, VSM, Chairman, Industrial Coordination Committee. He spoke about the broadband, digitization helping convergence, Internet and also the current technologies such as CDMA, WiFi, WiMax, GMPLS etc. Gen Sehgal traced the problems created by the mismatch between the requirement and allocation of frequency spectrum right from 1981 till date. He sought the views of the experts and the techno savvy audience for finding solution to spectrum related issues.
The expert panelists who deliberated on the subject were Shri R N Agarwal, Shri V P Chandan, President Qualcom, Shri S N Gupta, Advisor, TRAI, Lt Gen Davinder Kumar, VSM & Bar, Signal Officer-in-Chief, Shri K M Paul, Engineer-in-Chief AIR, Shri B B Anand, President Reliance Infocom Ltd, Maj R S Chhatwal, ADG, DIT, DG Sigs, Shri D Venugopal, Wg Cdr T R Dua (Retd), Advisor Bharati Televentures, Shri P K Garg, Wireless, Dr Rakesh Malhotra, Vice President, ASC Enterprises Ltd, Shri R K Arora, Gp Coordinator & Scientist ‘G’ MCIT.

Requirement, inadequacy of allocation, optimal utilization, standardization and high cost of the RF Spectrum were the main issues around which deliberations centered. The following are the salient points brought out by the panelists:-

• The RF Spectrum is a valuable resource and the demand for it is increasing with the current trends of utilization of mobile telecommunication services.
• The RF Spectrum utilization needs to be discussed between the WPC wing and users thoroughly to ensure objective, timely, contiguous and non-discriminatory allocations.
• All users should adopt the principle of co-operation and co-existence and share the available spectrum.
• The wireless links below 3GHz band should either change over to optical fiber copper cable or shift to frequencies above 10GHz in Ku or Ka band.
• The price of the spectrum should be made affordable.
• There should be an effective frequency monitoring system to point out; unauthorized transmissions, users causing interference and also the vacant/ unutilized frequencies in the already allotted bands. This will enable re-allocation of unused frequencies and vacation of unauthorized usages.
• Organizations using old inefficient transmission equipment should make efforts to replace them at the earliest in a time bound schedule.
• WLL, CDMA, WiFi & WiMax along with integrated systems which can provide multi-services from one platform should be introduced by the users.
• Indigenous software driven systems should be developed, manufactured and introduced as these would help to select the best frequency for operation dynamically and thus increase probability of sharing.
• Standardization in equipment manufacturing should be enforced to maintain EMI, EMC and specifications of other parameters to avoid interference to other users.

Prof K K Aggarwal, President IETE in his address emphasized the need for innovation and indigenous development to enable long term frequency planning. He said that the Govt, R&D organizations, academia, industry and users should discuss the measures to be adopted to improve utilization of radio frequency spectrum with indigenously designed and developed spectrum efficient transmission systems through a well coordinated plan.