The World Radiocommunication Conferece, WRC 19, is just five months away and Regional Telecommunications organisations and individual countries will shortly be finalising their positions for the Conference.

IARU Region 1 has now mailed every member society providing guidance on actions which they should take with their national spectrum regulator to advocate support for the amateur service position on relevant WRC Agenda Items.

If any member society has not received this mailing, please contact president@​iaru-​r1.​org

IARU was represented at the meeting of CEPT Project Team A (responsible for some aspects of the CEPT position for WRC-19), which has just finished in Prague. Of particular interest were discussions on two proposed Agenda items for WRC-23, concerning the sharing of the 1240 – 1300 MHz band with the Galileo navigation system and the proposal from France to study a range of frequencies, including the 144 MHz amateur band, for future aeronautical applications.

The output from PTA does not carry forward the Galileo proposal, but it is likely that further discussions will take place prior to the Conference Preparatory Group meeting in August. Meantime work on this issue will also continue in other specialist CEPT forums. IARU will continue to support this approach and it believes this will be the most efficient method for developing the sharing guidance required to protect Galileo operations in a timely manner.

Regarding new aeronautical frequencies (including 144 – 146 MHz), the proposal was not strongly opposed by administrations and has been carried forward to the higher level CEPT Conference Preparatory Group (CPG) meeting in August for final adoption.

IARU views with grave concern any proposal to include the 144 MHz band in the proposed aeronautical agenda item and will be making every effort to fully protect amateur radio interests and seek the support of regulators in this regard.

The band 144 – 146 MHz is allocated globally to the amateur and amateur satellite services on a primary basis. It is the only globally harmonised VHF band for the amateur and amateur satellite service. As such it is an important and widely used part of the amateur spectrum with a vast installed base of both terrestrial/maritime amateur users and systems and operational satellite stations including the International Space Station (ISS).

This heavily used band supports a large number of repeater stations, segments for weak-signal long distance terrestrial and EME (Earth-Moon-Earth) communications, satellite and ISS usage, data services, as well as conventional terrestrial and tropospheric communications. The Primary status of the band has also enabled a number of amateur aeronautical uses including on manned flights and high-altitude balloons. Supporting all of this is a wide variety of commercial and experimental equipment, ranging from ultra-low noise preamplifiers for sensitive receivers, software defined radios and transmitting systems that can deliver high EIRP levels when needed to overcome high loss propagation paths.

Given the propagation to/from an aircraft at altitude, it is entirely possible that harmful interference to sensitive amateur and amateur satellite receivers will be caused over a 1,000 km radius of a single aircraft.

IARU will shortly be providing a brief to Member Societies and other interested parties, asking them to discuss the French proposal with their administrations well in advance of the August CEPT-CPG meeting.

It is possible that France will seek to introduce into other Regional Telecommunications Organisations (RTO) the same proposal to study the 144 – 146 MHz band for aeronautical use. IARU will provide a brief shortly to enable representations to be made to administrations in countries under those RTOs for protection of this amateur spectrum allocation.

IARU’s Spectrum and Regulatory Liaison Committee (SRLC) is a forum comprising individual experts who are personally involved in work for IARU in relations with regulatory and standards organisations in Region 1 (Africa, Europe, Middle East and Commonwealth of Independent States).

Individually and collectively they establish the policy and strategic direction that IARU Region 1 should take in the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and in Region 1, Regional and Sub-Regional Telecommunication Organisations (RTOs) e.g. ASMG (Arab Spectrum Management Group), ATU (African Telecommunication Union), CEPT (Conférence Européenne des administrations des Postes et Télécommunications) and RCC (Regional Commonwealth in the field of Communications) on matters of importance to the interests of the amateur services (e.g. spectrum management, licensing and spectrum engineering).

The Chairman and the Committee identifies and commissions Region 1 experts to represent IARU at meetings/conferences of the above organisations in accordance with the following Terms of Reference and objectives, SRLC:

• Monitors and researches developments in relevant regulatory forums which potentially impact the amateur Service and amateur-satellite Service (the amateur services);
• Advises the IARU Executive Committee (EC) on the workings of RTOs which might impact the interests of the amateur services and process material and undertake actions delegated to it by the EC in respect of these bodies;
• Prepares submissions on regulatory and spectrum management issues detailing the views, concerns and objectives of the amateur services within the overall envelope of IARU’s global strategies;
• For ITU issues works closely with the IARU officers and experts from IARU Regions 2 and 3 to arrive at common positions to take in RTOs worldwide
• Liaises with the Political Relations Committee (PRC) on matters arising in the Radio Spectrum Policy Group (RSPG) and Radio Spectrum Committee (RSC) of the European Commission;
• Provides advice on regulatory concerns to IARU Member Societies and coordinate actions in core areas in support of IARU Region 1 and IARU global spectrum strategies;

SRLC also liaises with the Electro Magnetic Compatibility Committee (EMCC) concerning relevant issues raised in CEPT by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC), including any proposals to amend ETSI EN 301 783, the European standard for commercial amateur radio equipment.

In addition members of the SRLC work with other IARU permanent Committees (PRC, EMCC, HF (including MF and LF) Committee and the VHF and Microwave Committee to identify potential threats to the amateur services from regulatory pressures and agree with the PRC and other relevant permanent bodies, strategies and their implementation to ensure that such threats are managed in a way that limits any adverse impact on the amateur services.

The Future

First of all as Chairman of the SRLC I would like to encourage any member of an IARU Region 1 Member Society who has worked on spectrum management issues in their own country or in an international or regional organisation to join the Committee. I would also like to encourage applications for membership of SRLC from any member of an IARU Region 1 Member Society who has worked extensively in regional or international scientific bodies, especially if interested in regulatory and operational aspects of amateur radio. From time to time amateurs who belong to an IARU Member Society in R2 or R3 may also be invited to become a SRLC participant. In future there will be two categories of SRLC participant.

Meeting Experts

The first category will be Meeting Experts e.g. those SRLC participants who have been designated to attend a one-off or series of particular meetings, project teams, working groups or committees of external organisations, or other IARU committees. A report of the meeting attended should be prepared which should be no longer than an A4 page. Out of pocket expenses incurred in attending meetings are refundable. Meeting Experts will also be expected to comment on documents and papers from external organisations as well as those produced by SRLC participants before they are sent to external organisations. See the next paragraph below. It should also be noted that persons attending meetings on behalf of the EMCC and PRC are not subject to these SRLC procedures, although similar arrangements may be in place for these committees.

General Experts

The second category of SRLC participant will be General Experts. General Experts will receive all SRLC documents being addressed within the SRLC It is intended that in future most if not all documents produced by SRLC participants will be circulated to the Committee as a whole. In most cases a week will be allowed for comments, dependant on any deadlines imposed by an external body.

Physical meetings are unlikely to occur except for perhaps an informal gathering at the Freidrichshafen ‘Ham Radio’ annual event. However if there are comments from a number of members, with differing views a conference call should be arranged using Go-To Meeting or Skype.

Experts Directory

I would also like to keep a directory of SRLC participants on the IARU-R1 web-site. If you apply to become an SRLC IARU R1 expert please provide your name call-sign and contact information and indicate whether the latter can be included in the list of members on the web-site. This issue may need to be reviewed in the light of recent data protection initiatives around the World.