WRC-19 Day-5+Sat: Don’t count your chickens…

| November 3, 2019

Friday saw progress, as a few items became clear, or so people thought – as we went to overtime on Saturday.

The third Plenary session of the conference was held on Friday afternoon. This saw items where there was a consensus for ‘No Change’ (aka NOC) being addressed.

Two Agenda Items of interest were given the nod without a problem, the first good results for amateur radio:-

  • AI-1.13 (5G Mobile): No-Change to the 47-47.2 GHz primary amateur allocation (though it may get new applications next to it)
  • AI-1.16 (5GHz Wi-Fi expansion): No-Change for 5850-5925 MHz (which is an amateur allocation in Region-2)

So far so good. In the case of AI-9.1.6 Wireless Power (WPT-EV), it was also approved for NOC in principle, but its report text attracted too many comments and the plenary meeting sent it back down to Committee-6 for further consideration. Nonetheless the end of the first week did lead to a couple of news items:-

The IARU news release also included some recent progress on 50 MHz. This occurred on Friday when a skillful short break by the Chairman for informal discussions suggested a tentative compromise for accommodating the varying interests in the Region-1 frequency table. Unfortunately when it came to the extra Saturday meeting to hear the formal feedback on this, problems again surfaced between the more conservative and adventurous parties.

Further homework is thus needed on both WPT and 50MHz. The latter has particular time pressure as whatever the result is has to be passed up the Conference organisation for approvals by Working Group 4C, then Committee-4 overall, and then Plenary (hopefully without bounces back down the chain for rework) – and that is apart from a host of other topics of interest to the amateur and amateur satellite services.

So despite some weekend overtime, the story is far from over – and thus the title and moral – Don’t count your chickens before they are (fully) hatched.

 

Basestations disguised as Palm trees at WRC-19Look closely! – Mobilephone Basestations dressed up as palm trees at the WRC-19 Conference centre…

Category: Front Page News, GB2RS, WRC-19