The Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association has called for the federal government to set a target of 8GHz of new spectrum assignments for mobile services by 2030. The spectrum assignments should be spread across the low-band, mid-band, and mmWave bands.

AMTA released a strong policy position paper wherein the association accused broadcasters of spectral profligacy that is railed against the WiFi industry. In the same paper, the association also scorned the area-wide licence regime of the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

AMTA also advocated for the government to establish a clear and consistent approach to the allocation and reallocation of the spectrum. Research paper argued that an additional 800MHz of mid-band and 3.6GHz of mmWave spectrum should be assigned for IMT by 2030. Coleago conducted the analysis for the paper across three cities. This revealed the need for an additional 757MHz mid-band spectrum in Sydney, 827MHz in Melbourne, and 577MHz for Brisbane. The paper also highlighted that the spectrum quality is just as important as quantity, particularly in meeting projected 5G demands.

Meanwhile, the industry body argued that the terrestrial broadcasting industry has historically failed to “make significant ongoing investments to best transition to future technologies” or “taken the hard decisions to discontinue supporting older legacy technologies and migrate customers to newer, more spectrally efficient technologies.”

The paper also argues that the WiFi standard and devices are not spectrally efficient. In this case, the lack of spectral efficiency “may underpin requests for the 1,200MHz of the 6GHz band to be made available for WiFi services rather than being partitioned between WiFi and IMT services,” AMTA said.

In a related issue, AMTA cited that if there are more area-wide licence allocations in a spectrum band, there will be a more significant potential for interference. In this case, there is also a more significant potential for creating unnecessary dead zones due to interference mitigation requirements.

“Further, the use of area-wide licenses remains unproven, even at mmWave where the interference will be easier to manage due to the propagation characteristics and deployment scenarios in these bands,” the paper stated.

AMTA also called for establishing a clear and consistent approach to the allocation and reallocation of the spectrum. The paper also argues that the spectrum policy should have the principles of efficiency of use of finite spectrum resources.