The Main Regulated Radio Services

This chapter focuses on the provisions of International Telecommunication Union Radio Regulations (ITU RR); the international regulatory body developing these free web deliveries: Radio Regulations, Recommendations and Reports. It discusses only the services that most concern regulators around the world: broadcasting video (television) and sound (radio), mobile (mainly cellular), fixed point‐to point and point‐to‐multipoint, satellite communications. The chapter highlights regulatory and standardization issues; therefore, many ITU publications are given in the references. The broadcasting service consists of sound, video and data broadcasting. Broadcasting serves an important social function, and consequently many countries have established public service broadcasters as a matter of public policy. The proliferation of sites is outgrowing its environmental footprint, increasing the operators’ expenses and delaying the time‐to‐revenue. Directional point‐to‐point micro wave links remain due to time to market and flexibility, fiber optics increase as they provide capacity and distance, and copper wires decrease even though they deliver distance and availability.