WRC-19 Day-15: A Long Weekend

| November 17, 2019

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 Sunday night eventually the list of over 30 WRC-23 proposals was finally assembled for COM6 to consider on Monday, which will undoubtedly be a very long day (and evening!).

Whilst 23cm/Galileo is top of our unwanted list, six other proposals may also pose concerns if adopted – so careful attention is being given to the process, even if it was rather tedious and drawn out. One bright spot was the non-safety aeronautical proposal keeping away from 144 MHz despite pressures on all its other nominated bands.

Dave Sumner K1ZZ of IARU keeping watch on Future Agenda Items

AI-1.7 Small-sats: The degree of difficulty has been such was that all day Sunday had a long session on this topic. There is a strong interest in this item succeeding so that commercial applications get their own tele-command band and we can protect the integrity of the amateur satellite service. Senior Ofcom staff and RSGB witnessed a near intractable situation regarding the uplink ~149MHz frequency/conditions for small-satellites (whereas the low power 137 MHz downlink seemed less problematic).

AI-1.7: Small Satellites – Big Differences of views

The challenges arising across the slippages in Week-3 are also a theme in the IARU  Week-3 report

The Conference has only a few days before its final plenaries and signing ceremony…

Category: Front Page News, GB2RS, WRC-19