Broadcasters wind up the fall series of WRC planning meetings at the ITU in Geneva.

During the 10 day period from October 26th to November 3rd, the Working Party of the ITU Radio Bureau which looks after shortwave broadcasting, met in Geneva Switzerland. This is the last of the fall 2004 series of meetings of interest to Amateur Radio.

Shortwave broadcasters are of course very interested in the potential for interference to their listeners from BPL, and have been busy collecting information for a study currently underway. One concern which has not been discussed previously, is the impact on the the planning and scheduling of broadcasts of an increase in the background noise floor.

Broadcasters meet regularly to decide who will operate on what frequency during the next two six month periods.
The plans are updated continuously to take advantages of any gaps in frequency if for some reason a station does not go on the air as expected. The plans are set up so that a broadcaster can reach a target area at a particular time of day, on an optimum frequency. Since in many cases received signals are very weak, a small increase in noise floor can completely invalidate all the careful planning work.

On the BPL front, amateurs and broadcasters are on the same side of the argument. On the other hand, proposals from broadcasters for an increase of as much as 800 kHz of new spectrum between 4 and 10 MHz are of considerable concern to the amateur service since part of our 40 metre band is vulnerable.

At the current meetings, the IARU worked hard to ensure that a report, providing advice to the world radio conference in 2007, would include the concerns of the amateur service, and in fact point out that in North America we still have a problem between 7200 and 7300 kHz with night-time interference from broadcasters in Europe. We were successful in having the desired paragraphs added, but unless a much stronger case can be made over the next couple of years, the paragraphs may disappear. There appeared to be very little support for our 40 metre concerns amongst most of the broadcast delegates attending the meetings.

Ken Pulfer, VE3PU, represented the IARU at the meetings, and Walt Ireland WB7CSL represented the ARRL. Many other amateurs from countries around the world were present at the meetings, but they had other responsibilities, and could not speak in defence of amateur radio.

Source: Radio Amateurs of Canada

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