GSM EUROPE LAUNCHES INITIATIVE TO ADDRESS BASE STATION CONCERNS AS MOBILE DEMAND CONTINUES TO GROW

Added: (Mon Nov 19 2001)

Pressbox (Press Release) - Adoption of ‘Good Practice’ Recommendations to address
community health and environmental concerns


Budapest, Hungary, 19 November 2001: GSM Europe, the European Interest group of the GSM Association, announced a set of ‘good practice’ recommendations to better address public concerns about base stations. The recommendations have the objective of improving communication and consultation as a means of addressing the community challenges presented by the continued rapid growth of GSM and 3GSM mobile communications, now serving more than 600 million users worldwide. The recommendations were adopted at the 21st GSM Europe Plenary Meeting in Budapest on 16 November 2001.

Mobile services continue to grow and bring enormous benefits to society. To work more efficiently, the networks need sufficient infrastructure to achieve licence coverage conditions and to maintain the levels of capacity, coverage and service quality expected by consumers. GSM Europe has taken this initiative to ensure the right balance is struck between enabling development and access to mobile services in Europe and enable operators to voluntarily address the community issues presented by the implementation of additional network infrastructure for 2G and 3G services.

Pietro Cotino, Chair of GSM Europe said: “As the representative body for mobile network operators, we recognise the public concern about the siting and alleged health effects of radio base stations, despite the reassurance of European public health authorities. The ‘good practice’ recommendations provide a consistent framework of policies and procedures to help operators and their communities work together to address and minimise the issues.”

The main elements of the recommendations include clear information exchange between local authorities and other key stakeholders, proactive operators’ site sharing initiatives when feasible, environmental sensitivity considerations, and more efficient and detailed availability of data. European operators and the GSM Association are already supporting quality research programmes at EU and Member State level based on the World Health Organization (WHO) research agenda and the recommendations welcome on-going scientific review.

The key health and safety aspects include operator provision of written declarations of network infrastructure compliance with national and European guidelines.

“The availability of credible information is a priority in creating meaningful communications between the operators and communities. With demand for services and new products on mobile networks continuing to grow, it is important that concerns and issues on network deployment are addressed in an open and informative manner. The ’good practice’ recommendations set forward a clear process for operators to follow, and will set an expectation level recognisable by the operator community, local authorities and consumers,” added Cotino.

Notes for editors:

About the GSM Association:

The GSM Association is the world's leading wireless industry representative body, consisting of more than 574 second and third generation wireless network operators and key manufacturers and suppliers to the wireless industry. Membership of the Association spans 172 countries of the world.

The GSM Association is responsible for the deployment and evolution of the GSM family of technologies (GSM, GPRS, EDGE and 3GSM) for digital wireless communications. The Association's members provide digital GSM wireless services to more than 612 million customers (end October 2001). The GSM platform accounts for approximately 70 percent of the total digital cellular wireless market.

About GSM Europe:

GSM Europe is the European interest group of the GSM Association, the premier global body behind the world's leading wireless communications standard. GSM Europe represents around 123 operators in Europe with a combined total of around 340 million subscribers (end October 2001).

The GSM Association is responsible for the development, deployment and evolution of the GSM standard for digital wireless communications and for the promotion of the GSM platform.

Statistic sources: EMC World Cellular Database and The GSM Association unless otherwise stated.
GSM is a registered trademark

The ‘good practice’ recommendations are available on: http://www.gsmworld.com/gsmeurope/index.html

For more information, please contact:
Liz Macfarlan
Communications Assistant
Tel: +44 20 7518 0533
Fax: +44 20 7518 0531
E-Mail: mailto:lmacfarlan@gsm.org

Isabelle Mauro
Director, GSM Europe
Tel: +44 20 7518 0548
Email: mailto:imauro@gsm.org