The Telecommunications Market Commission, an independent Public Body that regulates national electronic communications and audiovisual services markets, was created by Royal Decree-Act 6/1996, of June 7, 1996 (Liberalisation of Telecommunications). The objective of the Telecommunications Market Commission is to establish and supervise the specific obligations that must be met by telecommunications market operators and to promote competition in the audiovisual services markets, pursuant to its regulatory provisions, to resolve conflicts between operators and if necessary, to act as an arbitrations body in disputes between those operators.

Mr Reinaldo Rodríguez Illera holds a Telecommunications Engineering Degree from the Polytechnic University of Madrid. From July 1991 to March 1995, he was Telecommunications Executive Advisor for the Spanish Ministry of Telecommunications. From 1995 to 1996, he was Telecommunications General Director and Government Delegate in Telefónica. During this period, he was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Spanish Post and Telegraph Body, the National Institute for Aerospace Technology and Hispasat. He has also been a member of the Board of Directors of Retevisión and Telefónica Internacional. In 1996 and 2002, he is appointed Advisor to the Comisión del Mercado de las Telecomunicaciones (CMT), the Spanish Telecommunications Market Commission. He is the CMT President since May 2005.

Broadband through Wireless – the unfolding story of the mobile Internet

The author will describe the emergence of wireless broadband technology with emphasis on the potential ubiquity of the 3GPP defined Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology. The author will present recent results of the performance of the technology from a user perspective as measured in pre-commercial field trials. He will discuss the potential for LTE to be the first global wireless technology without a competitor and look at likely geographical and radio frequency deployment scenarios. He will consider potential obstacles to its uptake – from technological, commercial and regulatory perspectives – and he will also contemplate how wireless broadband may ultimately become dominant over fixed. The author will consider parallel developments in web run-time technology and standards for the mobile Internet.

Professor Michael Walker is the Group Research and Development Director for the Vodafone Group of companies, with the responsibility for the Group’s research activities, intellectual property and technology standards worldwide. He also leads technology innovation and manages engagement with start-up companies. He is a member of the board of Vodafone Ventures, the venture capital arm of the company. Michael holds the Vodafone Chair in Telecommunications at Royal Holloway, University of London, as a part-time professor, is a visiting professor at the University of Surrey, and is Vice Chairman of Mobile VCE – a group of universities and industries researching mobile communications. He sits on scientific advisory boards for the Universities of Warwick and Surrey, the London Development Agency and some start-up companies. He has held a number of positions with standards bodies, including chairmanship of the body responsible for the security aspects of UMTS, and he was recently elected chairman of the Board of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute. Before joining Vodafone, Michael was Head of Mathematics at Racal Research, and prior to that an academic at the University of Tuebingen in Germany. Michael is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a member of the Council of the Academy and President Designate of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.

WiMAX - Technology, Deployments, Evolution and Competitive Landscape

Abstract: WIMAX (and it’s soon to follow twin LTE) is a new generation MIMO-OFDMA based technology that ushers in the 4G era. This talk will discuss WiMAX covering the following issues: its early origins in the US, core technological principles, standards status, major vendors and eco-system, details of deployments around the world, typical network planning parameters being used, dual mode and 3G/WiFi co-existence, and finally the evolution roadmap in infrastructure, terminals and standards.
We will conclude by looking at LTE’s current status and discuss whether, in the current economic scenario, LTE and WiMAX should be rivals or find ways to cooperate to serve global needs for low cost broadband mobile internet.

Professor Arogyaswami Paulraj, Stanford University, is a pioneer of MIMO wireless communications, a technology break through that enables dramatically improved wireless performance. MIMO is now incorporated into all new wireless standards including WiFi, WIMAX and 3.5G, and 4G.

Paulraj is the author of over 400 research papers, two text books and holds 41 US patents. He won a number of IEEE Awards for Best Papers and the Technical Achievement. Paulraj is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, and the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World and the Indian National Academy of Engineering.

In 1999, Paulraj founded Iospan Wireless Inc, which pioneered MIMO-OFDMA fixed wireless technology and developed chip sets for fixed wireless systems. Iospan was acquired in by Intel Corporation in 2003. In 2004, Paulraj co-founded Beceem Communications Inc to develop chips sets for WIMAX 802.16e standard. The company is now the leading supplier of Mobile WIMAX chipsets. He is known as the father of WIMAX in USA.

CRAHNs: Cognitive Radio Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract: Cognitive radio (CR) technology is envisaged to solve the problems in wireless networks resulting from the limited available spectrum and the inefficiency in the spectrum usage by exploiting the existing wireless spectrum opportunistically. CR networks, equipped with the intrinsic capabilities of the cognitive radio, will provide an ultimate spectrum-aware communication paradigm in wireless communications. CR networks, however, impose unique challenges due to the high fluctuation in the available spectrum as well as diverse quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. Specifically in cognitive radio ad hoc networks (CRAHNs), the distributed multi-hop architecture, the dynamic network topology, and the time and location varying spectrum availability are some of the key distinguishing factors. In this talk, intrinsic properties and current research challenges of the CRAHNs are presented. First, novel spectrum management functionalities such as spectrum sensing, spectrum sharing, and spectrum decision, and spectrum mobility are introduced from the viewpoint of a network requiring distributed coordination. A particular emphasis is given to distributed coordination between CR users through the establishment of a common control channel. Moreover, the influence of these functions on the performance of the upper layer protocols, such as the network layer, and transport layer protocols are investigated and open research issues in these areas are also outlined. Finally, a new direction called the commons model is explained, where CRAHN users may independently regulate their own operation based on pre-decided spectrum etiquette.

IAN F. AKYILDIZ received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Computer
Engineering from the University of Erlangen-Nuernberg, Germany, in 1978, 1981 and 1984, respectively. Currently, he is the Ken Byers Distinguished Chair Professor with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Director of Broadband Wireless Networking Laboratory. and Chair of the Telecommunication Group at Georgia Tech. Dr. Akyildiz is also an Honorary Professor with School of Electrical Engineering at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain since June 2008. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Computer Networks (Elsevier) Journal, the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Ad Hoc Networks Journal (Elsevier) in 2003 and of the Physical Communication (PHYCOM) Journal (Elsevier) in 2008. Dr. Akyildiz serves on the advisory boards of several research centers, journals, conferences and publication companies.. Dr. Akyildiz is an IEEE FELLOW (1996) and an ACM FELLOW (1997). He received numerous awards from IEEE and ACM. His current research interests are in Cognitive Radio Networks, Wireless Sensor Networks, Wireless Mesh Networks, Nanonetworks.