A Worldwide Swath of Spectrum? 
[1]
By Andrew Seybold
The ITU and its World Radio Administrative Congress (WARC) is the body that has divided up spectrum for use in various parts of the world. Within each of the major geographies, the spectrum is sometimes used for different types of wireless.
For example, our 850-MHz cellular band is used in China, Latin America, Canada and other places, but not in Europe where they chose to use the 900-MHz portion of the spectrum for their first GSM networks. In places such as Israel, a portion of the 900-MHz band is used for the military.
Links:
[1] http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/andrew-seybold-worldwide-swath-spectrum/2007-11-26