22 October 2002
Dolphin Telecom has requested that Autorité de régulation des télécommunications (ART) change the operating conditions of its authorisation issued under articles L. 33-1 and L. 34-1 of the Post and Telecommunications Code.
In a decree dated 30 March 2000, published in the Journal Officiel of 10 May 2000, Dolphin Telecom was authorised to establish and operate a professional mobile radio (PMR) network open to the public and to provide public telephone service. The specifications appended to the authorisation decree stipulate that the nationwide network must conform with the TETRA standard.
In its request, Dolphin Telecom stated that the professional market is focussing more and more on medium- and high-speed data transmission needs, and that it feels it cannot correctly meet these needs using the TETRA standard, or its upgrade (TETRA release 2). It requests permission to use the CDMA-PAMR technology to meet these needs, on the frequency band assigned it. This technology is based on the CDMA 2000 standard, which is part of the IMT 2000 family of interfaces defined by the ITU for third-generation (3G) mobile systems.
In order to understand fully the consequences a change to the authorisation might have, ART has launched a public consultation to allow interested parties to share their comments as regards the technical aspects, concerns and advantages of the request. The regulator will use the contributions to this consultation to make proposals to the Ministry of Telecommunications, who has the authority to modify an L.33-1 and L.34-1 authorisation, following examination of the case by ART.
ART must receive contributions of interested parties by 19 November 2002 noon at the latest.
