2.5 

Spectrum requirement for mobile services in India  

To estimate the spectrum requirement for services, we have to identify the 

methodology used, the growth of subscribers, the type of services likely to be 

in demand, the anticipated  traffic, etc.  To be able to carry out this exercise 

for the future requirement in India, this section outlines the methodology, 

which has been recommended by the ITU.  This methodology necessarily 

requires certain exemptions to be made and the final estimate could vary 

substantially depending on the assumptions made.  It should be noted that the 

ITU spectrum estimation method gives a conservative estimate in that it is 

based on a fixed frequency re use and does not take into account methods of 

improving spectrum utilisation through careful planning and other system 

techniques.  But for the purpose of spectrum planning, we can consider 

assessing spectrum requirements on a conservative basis.  Through this 

Consultation Paper it is proposed to try and arrive at assumptions, which are 

considered reasonable so that by using either the ITU recommended 

methodology or any other suggested methodology, some estimate of longer 

term requirement of spectrum may be arrived at. 

It is, however, appreciated that potentially there is a high demand for 

spectrum, particularly if the mobile data usage picks up at any point in the 

future. 

2.5.1 Methodology 

The future radio spectrum requirement can be estimated using ITU 

methodology given in Recommendation ITU R M.1390

2

.  Whilst this method 

was developed to calculate the spectrum requirements for IMT 2000 systems, 

the ITU R M.1390 specifically recommends and encourages the use of the 

methodology for other Public Land Mobile Radio systems. 

The basic theme of this methodology is to determine the individual spectrum 

requirements of a combination of specific environments and services in a 

given geographical area.  The spectrum requirement is obtained by summing 

the spectrum for the specific services and environments and applying 

weighting factors to take account of concurrent services (  

es

) in a given area 

and to accommodate the impacts of multiple operators and spectrum sharing 

(   ). The estimation of spectrum requirements for the future is not an exact 

calculation and the methodology intends to capture only the first order effects.   

The process flow of the method, (calculated separately for the uplink and 

down link) is explained in ITU R M.1390 and is briefly as follows: 

1) 

Defining The Environment 

In Building High Density (CBD) 

Urban Pedestrian 

2

 Methodology for the Calculation of the IMT 2000 Terrestrial Spectrum Requirement. 

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