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Summary

The inaugural Americas Spectrum Management Conference took place in Washington DC on 19th & 20th October (with a pre-conference workshop on 18th October), and provided a high-level meeting point for all representatives from the Americas and global spectrum management community.

A selection of photographs taken from the conference are now available. Please click on the tab above entitled "Conference photos".

Speakers include

Jonathan S. Adelstein

Administrator, Rural Utilities Service

US Department of Agriculture

John Kneuer

President and Founder

JKC Consulting LLC

Marc Dupuis

Director General, Engineering, Planning and Standards Branch

Industry Canada

Chris Pearson

President

4G Americas

Evan Kwerel

Senior Economic Advisor

FCC

Mindel De la Torre

Chief of International Bureau

FCC

Mike Byrne

Chairman

Radio Spectrum Policy Group, European Union

Julius Knapp

Chief of the Office of Engineering Technology

FCC

Richard S.Whitt

Director and Managing Counsel for Telecom and Media Policy

Google, Inc.

Ambassador David A. Gross

Partner

Wiley Rein LLC

More information

With contributions from all of the main stakeholders at both a policy and industry level from the US, Canada and Latin America, this conference took a comprehensive look at spectrum management policies across the region. It offered the chance to look at best practices in areas such as auction design, maximising spectrum efficiency, the award of digital dividend spectrum and the provision of broadband coverage for rural areas. In addition, the conference looked ahead to key issues to be considered at WRC-12, as well as the possible scope and benefits of deepening co-ordination of spectrum policy across the Americas, and by bringing in speakers from the EU and Asia, the debate was also extended to a global level.

Session titles were based around:

- The 700MHz band plan – Should countries in the Americas follow the US model or develop their own contiguous band plan?

- Finding new spectrum for the Broadband Age

- Are regulators identifying the right spectrum bands to support wireless broadband?

- What role can whitespace and dynamic use of spectrum play in maximising spectrum efficiency?

- Bridging the rural divide - using radio spectrum to improve mobile broadband coverage in rural areas

- How successful have spectrum auctions in the Americas been to date? What auction formats should be used?

- Incentive Auctions: Will the US proposals to use incentive auctions work? Could they be applied in other countries?

- WRC12 – Issues for the Americas

- Spectrum Policy – what scope for global co-ordination?

PLUS... a LTE demonstration from our Platinum Sponsor, Ericsson on 19 October.

 
LTE: Technology for a Remote Newscaster

News teams are constantly striving to be the first correspondent on-the-scene for breaking stories. By harnessing the power of commercial LTE networks and utilizing the capability to define QoS, news crews can be on site using commercial off-the-shelf hardware to stream high quality video in minutes. By using commercial mobile broadband spectrum, Ericsson will demonstrate how operators can see improved revenues by defining different service levels, and how end-users will see value in being able to deliver high quality video on an LTE network.

The demo took place on 19 October in the exhibition area during registration, lunch and the day's refreshment breaks.

For further information on any aspect of the event please contact Tom Chinnock on +44 (0)2920 783 025 / tom.chinnock@forum-global.com

The model for the event is based on the highly successful EU Spectrum Management Conference, run by our sister company Forum Europe, which has been held annually since 2005 and each year attracts more than 250 stakeholders in the field.