Equitable access to spectrum in further development of the Geneva 2006 frequency plan

Abstract. Since the frequency plan of the Regional Radiocommunication Conference Geneva 2006 has come into force, many attempts have been made towards its enhancement. The preliminary results, however, seem not to be compliant with elementary principles of distribution justice. Therefore, the planning principles which lead to the observed imbalance will be scrutinized. Furthermore it will be shown that the utilization of spectrum can be advanced in a balanced way when the same (necessary) condition for "equitable access", which has been used by a group of middle European countries for the construction of the original frequency plan, is applied to plan refinements as well. The necessary condition mentioned consists simply in the parity of the number of coverages (constituted of disjoint allotments) configured in the plan for each country. In order to be able to plan enhancements, the concept of coverage number has to be generalized to the case of incomplete coverages of potentially overlapping allotments. The computation of coverage numbers is straightforward and renders the concept of coverage number parity a useful tool to be applied as a necessary condition in testing a frequency plan variant for equitable access.