Friday 22nd November saw WRC-19 conclude its month long biggest ever conference. Many of the 3300 delegates had started to travel home even before the release of the ‘Provisional Final Acts’ and closing ceremony. The ITU website has released the provisional acts as a huge 567 page pdf document – a tribute to the the […]
WRC-19 has approved an allocation in the 50 MHz band for amateurs in Region 1 at its morning plenary in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, on Thursday 21 November 2019. The decision comes after more than three weeks of strenuous negotiations to reconcile widely disparate views of Region 1 administrations. The result is a dramatic improvement in […]
WRC-19 entered it final week with effort aimed at pinning down the remaining difficult items, including the future agenda for WRC-23 and WRC-27 and preparing for its final plenary sessions to approve the results of various agenda items including 50MHz. AI-1.7 Small Satellites: This surprisingly difficult issue was the first to reach a compromise. Ofcom […]
The slipping schedule saw slow progress on Friday and consequently full overtime on Saturday and Sunday for future agenda items (AI-10), small-satellites (AI-1.7), 5G mobile (AI-1.13) and 5GHz Wi-Fi (AI-1.16). Overtime started early, with a queue to get in before the 9am Saturday start. The 8:40m Saturday morning queue – AI-10 WRC-23/27 Agenda: Late on […]
WRC-19 like any major international conference has news and media associated with it. The ITU have a TV Studio at the venue for interviews – including one with IARU President Tim Ellam VE6SH which is now available on Youtube. The IARU summary position has also featured in an ITU news release IARU Positions feature in […]
Week-3 should be where even the harder items are heading towards solutions. Conveniently a CEPT status table shows that many items are running behind schedule or being escalated to higher levels as their lower-level drafting groups close. CEPT WRC-19 Status table 50 MHz: One of the few clearer signs of progress has been on AI-1.1 […]
Thursday and Friday saw the halfway point reached at WRC-19 but this has led to some agenda items being continued into the weekend ahead of key deadlines on Monday. Satellites: One example, so far not mentioned, is a solution for Agenda Item 1.7 for tele-command spectrum for short duration small satellites (cubesats etc). A solution […]
Wednesday saw some encouraging signs for two key items – Wireless Power (WPT-EV) and 50 MHz. First up was the re-work on the short AI-9.1.6 WPT-EV report that had been asked for by the Plenary. Significant background effort had been made to hone a couple of paragraphs for Committee-6 (COM6) to consider. This had a […]
A somewhat difficult start to the day’s proceedings began with another AI-10 Proposal being introduced for WRC-23 – protecting RNSS (Galileo etc) from secondary amateur usage in the 23cm band. From an amateur viewpoint this is more complex and unwelcome as a top level WRC item, than as a local CEPT work item (which has […]
Week-2 started with both 50MHz and other items – inc a new arrival from afar. 50 MHz resumed after the weekend session. Discussions resumed in the sub-working group, trying to create a delicate balance between various potential allocations for amateurs; and appropriate protection criteria for other incumbent services such as mobile or broadcasting. A very […]
