Day-1: WRC-23 Begins & 23cm Progress

Monday November 20 saw a hugely well attended opening ceremony, speeches and initial plenaries as WRC-23 got underway. Around 3500+ delegates were present; and on the sidelines some 23cm news emerged from IARU.   

The afternoon saw the initial top level committee structure confirmed, with the finer detail at individual agenda items to come on Tuesday.  However a few items where agreement had been reached did surface – and AI-9.1b on Amateur/RNSS coexistence was one.

Regarding this top priority for amateur radio, IARU were able to confirm the progress on 23cm  in the preceding ITU Radio Assembly. The draft text of an ITU-R Recommendation had been agreed after some long and difficult hours seeking a usable compromise. Most of the recent difficulties had been in the lower 1250MHz part of the band, as well as power and antenna angles profiles for 1260-1262MHz amateur satellite uplinks. However as the detailed IARU report indicates, achieving consensus on what will become ITU-R Recommendation M.2164 is just the first vital step. How it is referred to (if at all) by the ITU Radio Regulations is the critical challenge to come.

Another early document was the report of the ITU-R Bureau (BR). This suggested some other editorial/clarification changes to amateur allocation footnotes/definitions, which will be reviewed during the conference.

As per the panoramic photo below, the main venue is impressive. Our UAE hosts again showed their organising skills at the end of the day with an outside gala evening dinner – but now it really is down to work.

The UK Ofcom delegation leads (Royaume-Uni); and packed out in a follow-up CEPT coordination meeting:-

Category: Front Page News, WRC-23