WRC-12 Day 10 – 1 February 2012 – Movement forward

Agenda Item 1.23 – 500kHz

The 12th and final meeting of the sub working group took place in the late afternoon and continued into the evening. After intense lobbying during the day a way forward was agreed with China and the Russian Federation, agreeing to text after their concerns into protection of the aeronautical radionavigation servce was taken into consideration. That said, however, Iran and the Arab Spectrum Management group are still insisting on their No Change (NOC) position. The negotiations now move up a notch to Working Group 4C, which is dealing with amateur and maritime issues. The principal question of whether or not there should be an allocation in this frequency band remains while NOC positions are maintained.

Agenda Item 1.15 – HF Oceanic Radar

No real progress is being made on this agenda item despite a growing number of meetings. If we thought progress on the 500kHz proposal was slow then we should consider ourselves fortunate we are not playing an active part in these discussions. Frequency segments are identified, agreed and then discarded. CEPT is currently supporting an allocation at 5MHz but at least one regional group is questioning whether it is really needed. At least 7 meetings are scheduled for this subject on Thursday.

Agenda Item 8.2 – Future Agenda Items

There is a move by the ITU to reduce the number of agenda items being considered for future conferences and to achieve this, steps are being taken to try and combine the large number of IMT proposals being received. There is no progress to report on the Cuban proposal for a secondary 50kHz segment at 5MHz but support is being sought from administrations already permitting amateur operations on this band.

Category: WRC-12