Important Fall meetings underway at ITU in Geneva

From September 22nd to 28th a Working Party of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) concerned with Land Mobile and Amateur services held meetings in Geneva Switzerland to discuss, among other things, preparations for the World Radio Conference in 2007 and, in particular, studies related to the 40 metre amateur band and a possible new amateur band at 135 kHz.

Larry Price W4RA, President of the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU), headed a two man delegation to the meetings, accompanied by Ken Pulfer VE3PU. Paul Rinaldo W4RI, represented the ARRL on the US delegation and Jay Oka represented JARL. Ken was also an official member of the Canadian delegation at the meetings. Many other radio amateurs were also present at this and other concurrent meetings at the ITU. Noteworthy was Hans Zimmerman, F5VKP who was representing the IARU at meetings preparing for the World Summit on the Information Society, which will take place soon in Tunisia.

The study of the HF bands between 4 and 10 MHz, and a request for up to 800 kHz of new broadcast band spectrum in the range, also looked at the IARU request for a world wide exclusive band between 7.0 and 7.3 MHz. There were a variety of conflicting ideas on how to deal with the requests, including Canadian, Russian and US suggestions for no change to the existing bands, and a European suggestion for a new allocation of 350 kHz to HF broadcasting. After several meetings, including two evening sessions, one of which was on the weekend, a temporary compromise was reached, which retained all the proposals except for the IARU's, which will be carried over to the next round of meetings in March 2006.

This round of meetings was the most difficult to date, and they can be expected to continue at an increasing intesity in 2006. The IARU will be there trying to keep putting the amateur case forward, but so far there is little sympathy and understanding from other delegates who have their own problems and priorities.

VE3PU stayed on for the final week of September to participate in discussions on BPL and on possible new amateur bands above 250 Ghz, and then will continue to October 15th with Walt Ireland, WB7CSL, to participate in meetings with the HF broadcast community, where the broadcasters will try to strengthen their arguments for more spectrum.

Source: Radio Amateurs of Canada

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