Today the Secretary General of the African Telecommunications Union (ATU), the Director of the ITU Radiocommunication Sector and the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications of Cameroon opened the first on-line meeting of APM-23, which from 3 – 7 August will commence preparing the African position for the 2023 ITU World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-23). IARU is attending the meeting.
It was stated that WRC-23 should build on the successes of WRC-19 for Africa and that regional bodies such as ATU were instrumental in achieving consensus on difficult issues. Furthermore, the ITU Study Groups had also initiated their WRC-23 studies and African participation was welcome.
WRC-23 has a number of agenda items which may impact the amateur and/or amateur satellite services particularly the requirement to determine if additional measures are required to ensure coexistence with the radio-navigation satellite service in the 1 240 – 1 300 MHz frequency band. As ATU is one of the four regional organisations in ITU Region 1, IARU-R1 intends to participate in future WRC-23 APM meetings to protect amateur frequency allocations wherever possible.
A number of speakers stressed the need for the participation of women, youth and academia in telecommunications. IARU supports the need for bringing amateur radio to these sectors in order for example, to help combat digital exclusion and provide communications in emergency situations in the case of natural disasters.
