UMTS in the international context

The Commission considers that the further development of UMTS should aim at establishing a global standard, much like what was done for GSM. The Commission calls on Member States and industry at large to join its efforts and take the following actions

· Proposing and promoting the UMTS standard (under development within ETSI) as a key element of the IMT-2000 recommendation currently in preparation at the ITU.

· Securing spectrum availability for UMTS for its longer term needs by seeking adequate frequency allocations through the WRC process. In particular, the Commission supports the CEPT and the UMTS Forum position to propose the inclusion of the issue in the agenda of the WRC-99 conference, at the forthcoming WRC-97. The Commission also fully supports the concerted efforts of the UMTS Forum towards the world community to secure further spectrum for terrestrial mobile communications.

· Encouraging contact between interested industry organisations, standardisation bodies and administrations of Europe and those of our commercial partners in order to promote the goal of a globally interoperable UMTS system and to help in establishing co-operation and alliances among private partners at an early stage of UMTS development.

· Initiate at an early stage the discussion of market access and free circulation of UMTS systems and terminals building on the experiences of the GM PCS MoU.