In Switzerland, frequencies are regulated by ICS manager

Adopted par the Federal Communications Office, the ICS Manager system is making it possible for the Swiss Confederation to manage efficiently all the frequencies of the public and private radio communication services.

Paris, November 2001

"Ofcom", the Federal Communications Office, was founded in Switzerland in 1992. In the context of the abolition of monopolies, various missions of regulation and arbitration of competition have been entrusted to it and, in particular, the regulation of radio and television and the creation of the conditions necessary for the liberalization of the telecommunications market. Attached to the Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications, Ofcom is a public service and, in this respect, it has a supervisory role in the Swiss audiovisual landscape, its functions including consideration of cultural, political and environmental aspects of radio?communications. At present, Ofcom is also working on the future implementation of third generation mobile telephone networks operating with the UMTS standard, and particularly on the allocation of frequencies to the various operators.

At the beginning of January 1999, Ofcom set up an internal project aimed at providing the organization with new modern computer tools capable of helping it to carry out its various tasks better. In particular, those tasks relating to the management of radio frequencies over the entire Swiss territory, compliance with international regulations and prevention of interference between network operators. "Ofcom was already using several frequency management software products operating on PC and on mainframes and with heterogeneous databases", explains Michel Giraudel, Project Leader, "but the breaking up of monopolies has resulted in a strong development of the service and therefore in the search for harmonization of the computer facilities used by the technical services of the Office."

Specific needs to be taken into account.

In the context of an overall project to restructure its information system, Ofcom therefore felt the need to search the market for a single software product capable of managing all of the radio frequencies (radio, professional mobile radio networks, television and mobile telephony) and also to gather all of the previously used files and databases together in a single Oracle database. "Ofcom carried out an in-depth internal study of the tools available on the market which best met our needs", explains Michel Giraudel.

ATDI, already present within Ofcom with its ICS Telecom software, was quickly selected to supply the ICS Manager software which met the greatest number of Ofcom's selection criteria.

Among these criteria, those which counted most in the final choice related to ATDI's capability in the radio frequency field, the cost?effectiveness of the ICS Manager product, the very wide scope of the software and, finally, the integration in the product of complex international regulations. Furthermore, Ofcom wanted a personalization of the product in order to include PMR (Professional Mobile Radio) networks which are widely used in Switzerland, especially for taxis, ambulances and trucking contractors. Ofcom in fact manages the licensing of these private operators which, in Switzerland, represent some 60% of radio communication operating licenses (excluding CB). Michel Giraudel comments, "It was essential for us to have specific functions to take account of PMR's. These functions were set up in close cooperation with the users and were integrated, to our great satisfaction, by ATDI".

An initial version of ICS Manager was delivered to Ofcom by ATDI in August 2000, followed in November of the same year by a second version including the functions relating to digital broadcasting. Finally, in July 2001, a third version was installed in Ofcom's information system with specific PMR management functions. At present about fifteen users have been trained in ICS Manager and more than thirty should be able to use it by this time in 2002. "From now on we have a universal tool, operating in Windows both on fixed stations and on notebooks. The flexibility of the software, its very complete range of functions and the acknowledged capability of ATDI are major points of satisfaction and give us confidence in the soundness of our choice", concludes Michel Giraudel.