 (L-R) IARU team members Wojciech Nietyksza, SP5FM, Michael Owen, VK3KI, David Sumner, K1ZZ and Robert W. Jones, VE7RWJ. Jones is serving as a consultant to the IARU. IARU President Larry Price, W4RA, heads the IARU observers. [Tim Totten, N4GN, Photo] |
NEWINGTON, CT, Jul 3, 2003--There's good news from World Radiocommunication Conference 2003 (WRC-03) for 40-meter enthusiasts. In an 11th-hour compromise, delegates to WRC-03, which wraps up officially July 4, agreed to move broadcasters out of 7100 to 7200 kHz in Regions 1 and 3 to make room for the Amateur Service. The agreement eventually will mean a 200-kHz worldwide allocation at 40 meters. Although the change does not go into effect until 2009, that's considered speedy in International Telecommunication Union (ITU) terms. Some of the timelines proposed during discussions on the 7 MHz agenda item would have held off the changes until 2033! The WRC-03 action on 7 MHz makes no change in the exclusive US 40-meter allocation. US amateurs will continue to enjoy the full 7000 to 7300 kHz band they now have.
"History was made today," said International Amateur Radio Union Secretary (and ARRL CEO) David Sumner, K1ZZ, who called the agreement a big change over the status quo. "Never before in the history of radiocommunication has an HF broadcasting band been shifted to accommodate the needs of another service. But that's what happened at WRC-03 this morning."
Sumner said a "carefully crafted compromise" was approved on first and second reading in the WRC-03 Plenary. It calls for broadcasters to vacate 7100 to 7200 kHz by March 29, 2009, and it allocates the band to the Amateur Service from that date forward.
 Sumner cited "the extraordinary efforts" of Jan Verduijn of the Radiocommunications Agency, The Netherlands, the CEPT Coordinator for Agenda Item 1.23--the 7 MHz issue. "Jan was totally committed to finding a solution, not only for radio amateurs but for broadcasters and the fixed and mobile services as well," Sumner said. |
"This provides a worldwide amateur allocation of 200 kHz less than six years from now," noted Sumner, speaking on behalf of the IARU observer team headed by IARU President Larry Price, W4RA. Sumner pointed out that the compromise cuts in half the incompatibility between amateur and broadcasting use of the 7 MHz band and doubles the 40-meter spectrum available to amateurs in Regions 1 and 3.
While the result falls short of the IARU's goal of a 300-kHz worldwide exclusive band for amateurs, Sumner explained that ITU conference decisions are reached by consensus. "Building consensus requires give and take," he said, "and we didn't have much to give."
Sumner said the historic 7-MHz compromise "took the cooperation of broadcasters and many, many others to enable us to bring this home for radio amateurs." He credited delegates and other conference participants--not all of them radio amateurs and including some who were strongly opposed to the proposal at the start--with making the compromise possible.
A number of countries--mostly in Region 3 and the Arab States--also have allocated 7100 to 7200 kHz by "footnote" to Fixed and Mobile services, shared with amateurs on a national basis. None of the countries is in Region 2.
More than 2600 delegates and other participants have been attending the four-week conference, chaired by Dr Veena Rawat of Canada. For WRC-03, the IARU fielded its largest team of observers at an ITU conference in more than a decade.
 The Geneva International Conference Center where WRC-03 took place is adjacent to International Telecommunication Union headquarters in Geneva. |
"Good ITU compromises--and virtually every decision made here is a compromise--are sometimes described as leaving everyone equally unhappy," Sumner remarked. "Your Geneva team is tired and pretty happy."
Other Amateur Radio-Related Actions at WRC-03
WRC-03 delegates also agreed to an extensive rewrite of Article 25 of the Radio Regulations, which defines the Amateur and Amateur-Satellite services. Article 25 had included a requirement that an amateur applicant "shall prove that he is able to send correctly by hand and to receive correctly by ear texts in Morse code signals" but permitted administrations to waive the requirement for operation for "stations making use exclusively of frequencies above 30 MHz."
The reworded Article 25.5 now says, "Administrations shall determine whether or not a person seeking a license to operate an amateur station shall demonstrate the ability to send and receive texts in Morse code signals." Sumner said edits to the Article 25 rewrite--including the Morse issue--continued right up to the proposal's first reading in the Plenary. That included agreement upon a Canadian proposal to replace the word "prove" with the word "demonstrate."
The practical difference is that the wording change now leaves it up to radiocommunication regulatory bodies in each country to determine if they wish to require a Morse code test for amateur applicants. Some US observers predict that the revised wording of 25.5 will spark a flurry of petitions for rule making to the FCC to eliminate Element 1, the 5 WPM Morse code examination, as a requirement for HF operation.
An additional Article 25 change calls on administrations to verify "the operational and technical qualifications" of amateur applicants, using ITU Radiocommunication Sector Recommendation M.1544 as guidance. Other revisions permit international communication on behalf of third parties only in case of emergencies and disaster relief, but it leaves up to administrations to determine the applicability of the provision to amateur stations under their jurisdiction. In addition, an administration may determine whether or not to permit those granted an amateur license by another administration to operate an amateur station while that licensee is temporarily in its territory, "subject to such conditions or restrictions it may impose."
A more detailed explanation of these and other Article 25 changes is included in the article "New Regulations for the Amateur Services," by Michael Owen, VK3KI, a member of the IARU team at Geneva, is available on the IARU Web site.
 The rooftop antennas of 4U1ITU atop the headquarters of the International Telecommunication Union headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. |
In other Amateur Radio-related items, WRC-03 okayed revisions to Article 19 of the Radio Regulations to provide more flexibility for administrations to assign amateur call signs. Administrations will be able to assign amateur stations call signs with suffixes containing up to four characters--the last of which would be a letter. The prefix would be the national identifier and a single numeral (the "call district" in some countries) specified in the Radio Regulations. For special events, the revision provides for even more than four characters for temporary use.
Delegates also provided a secondary allocation for satellite-borne synthetic aperture radars (SARs) within the 70-cm band (432-438 MHz), subject to limitations designed to protect the Amateur and Amateur-Satellite services, among others.
A ceremonial signing of the Final Acts of the Conference is set for the afternoon of July 4. Articles 19 and 25 take effect on July 5, 2003. In general, the other Final Acts take effect on January 1, 2005.
Planning Under Way for Next WRC
Planning already is under way for the next WRC, tentatively planned to be held in 2007. Two items of significance to the Amateur Service are on the WRC-07 agenda being recommended by WRC-03 to the ITU Council.
The first calls for a review of "the allocations to all services in the HF bands between 4 MHz and 10 MHz" with a number of exclusions, including the band 7000 to 7200 kHz that WRC-03 just reviewed. Since spectrum requirements for HF broadcasting are among the factors to be taken into account, this item either could present a threat to 7200 to 7300 kHz, or it could provide an opportunity for further realignment. "For both reasons it merits our close attention," Sumner said in his final report from WRC-03. "Unfortunately, the agenda item does not include a clear 'pointer' toward the desirability of trying to complete the [7 MHz] realignment."
The second item would "consider a secondary
allocation to the Amateur Service in the frequency band 135.7-137.8 kHz." The
low-frequency allocation is in the common table of frequency allocations used
by European administrations, and Canada has been pressing for such an
allocation in the international Table. Earlier this year, the FCC went along
with objections from utility companies that use the band for power line carrier
(PLC) communication and denied a sliver allocation at 136 kHz to amateurs.
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