WRC-12 Day 17 – 8 February 2012 – Waiting
Agenda Item 1.23 – 500kHz
The first reading of the text for an amateur service band at 472-479kHz was listed for consideration at today’s plenary session scheduled for this afternoon. The rather ambitious agenda placed the item halfway down and, in reality, item considerations only reached one third of the way down in the hour and twenty minutes allocated to this session. Consequently, there is a good chance this will now be considered during the next plenary session, late Friday afternoon.
This text provides for a global allocation to the amateur service with a maximum radiated power of 1W eirp. Administrations, however, may permit stations located more than 800km from the borders of countries listed in a footnote a maximum radiated power of 5W eirp. The list of countries in the footnote is quite large and consists mainly of countries within the Arab Spectrum Management Group although the Russian Federation, Belarus and the Ukraine also appear. A total of 29 countries are in this particular footnote. This is out of the 162 countries registered as attending the conference.
An associated footnote also defines the countries in which amateur operation on this frequency band will not be permitted. This is basically the same list but excludes the Ukraine and, interestingly enough, Iran. The positions on footnotes could change during the course of this afternoon’s plenary.
From the UK amateur service aspect it means that the UK administration may permit the use of 5W eirp. This conclusion is based on the most easterly point of the UK being well in excess of 800km from the nearest border of a country listed under the footnote, ie the Russian Federation Oblast of Kaliningrad.
The involved national delegates and the IARU team observers are keeping their fingers tightly crossed.
Agenda Item 8.2 – Future Agenda Items
5MHz
Text has still to emerge for this possible future agenda item and tomorrow is the last meeting of the Working Group dealing with these matters. Opinions gained during corridor meetings have established that there is support for this but everyone is in limbo until the text appears.
Category: WRC-12
