After four hec­tic weeks of World Radio Con­fer­ence and a pre­ced­ing week of Radio Assem­bly meet­ings, WRC-23 con­clud­ed on Fri­day 15^th Decem­ber where over­all ama­teur radio fared very well, despite the enor­mous pres­sures across the radio spec­trum from LF- to Ter­a­hertz. This is a trib­ute to the IARU team effort, that at times had to work through­out this peri­od from 8:00 am to as late as beyond 2:00 am and on weekends.

Top of the ama­teur radio pri­or­i­ty list was Agen­da Item 9.1b on the coex­is­tence of the sec­ondary ama­teur and ama­teur-satel­lite allo­ca­tion with the pri­ma­ry radio nav­i­ga­tion satel­lite ser­vice in 1240–1300 MHz. This had seen four years of stren­u­ous effort in the run-up to WRC and result­ed in a rec­om­men­da­tion being agreed at the Radio Assem­bly, fol­lowed by WRC23 agree­ing to men­tion the rec­om­men­da­tion in a new foot­note for the allo­ca­tion. Both the rec­om­men­da­tion and the foot­note are an excel­lent out­come for the ama­teur services.

A num­ber of oth­er items were rel­e­vant to the ama­teur ser­vice and had been pri­ori­tised beforehand:

• AI‑1.12:  40–50MHz radar sounders. These have now been large­ly lim­it­ed to the polar area.

• AI‑1.14:   231.5–252 GHz re-allo­ca­tions for Earth Sens­ing. For­tu­nate­ly, our sec­ondary 241–248 GHz allo­ca­tion is unchanged and the pri­ma­ry allo­ca­tion of 248–250 GHz is unaffected.

• AI‑9.1a:  on Space weath­er sen­sors was an item of major inter­est. Aa clear def­i­n­i­tion for such sen­sors was arrived at, with fre­quen­cy pro­tec­tion being agreed as an agen­da item for WRC-27.

• AI‑1.2:  More broad­band in the 3.3 GHz and 10GHz (in Region 2). A dif­fi­cult chal­lenge on this as the ama­teur ser­vices are sec­ondary – with numer­ous (main­ly South Amer­i­can) coun­tries allo­cat­ing mobile broad­band by way of foot­notes. Instead of a region-wide des­ig­na­tion for IMT at 10.0–10.5 GHz in Region 2 there is a foot­note lim­it­ed to a dozen countries.

Every WRC agrees to an agen­da for the next con­fer­ence under Agen­da Item-10. This AI had an unprece­dent­ed num­ber of pro­pos­als for both WRC-27 and pre­lim­i­nary ones for WRC-31. Fol­low­ing the rel­a­tive­ly quick agree­ment reached on AI‑9.1b, the IARU team switched most of its effort to these future pro­pos­als in order to reduce the impact on the ama­teur ser­vices as numer­ous ama­teur bands were under consideration.

WRC-27

The WRC-27 agen­da will have nine­teen items of which the fol­low­ing are most rel­e­vant to the ama­teur services:

• 1300–1350 MHz — A pre­vi­ous pro­pos­al for this band, adja­cent to 23cm was sup­pressed, pro­vid­ing cer­tain­ty for our sec­ondary allocation.

• Space Weath­er – this poten­tial AI was ini­tial­ly very con­cern­ing as both the 0.1–20 MHz and 28 and 50 MHz bands were ini­tial­ly under con­sid­er­a­tion, until con­cerns were raised and a team effort result­ed in these allo­ca­tions being removed from the topic.

• Lunar Com­mu­ni­ca­tions – the future agen­da item ini­tial­ly includ­ed 70cm and oth­er bands where EME could be restrict­ed. For­tu­nate­ly, the UHF aspect of this AI was mod­i­fied to exclude 430–440MHz.

• 10GHz – we were for­tu­nate that the band was with­drawn from anoth­er round of con­sid­er­a­tion for mobile broad­band, espe­cial­ly in Region 1.

WRC-31

Pre­lim­i­nary res­o­lu­tions were agreed on a record num­ber of items of which these two are espe­cial­ly relevant:

• WPT Wire­less Pow­er Trans­mis­sion – both near-field and beamed being con­sid­ered as part of the ITU radio reg­u­la­tions, whilst min­imis­ing its impact from interference.

• 275–325 GHz Allo­ca­tions – which will include an oppor­tu­ni­ty for the ama­teur and ama­teur-satel­lite service.

The end result is the IARU team worked effec­tive­ly to min­i­mize the ama­teur bands from future stud­ies. This is again a great result for ama­teur radio.

At the con­clu­sion of WRC23 IARU is very pleased with the over­all result. The IARU team has already start­ed to dis­cuss and con­sid­er how to engage and resource for the next cycle lead­ing up to WRC27. IARU WRC-coor­di­na­tor and Vice-Pres­i­dent Ole Garpes­tad LA2RR expressed his plea­sure with the results and com­pli­ment­ed the extra­or­di­nary effort of the ded­i­cat­ed team of IARU vol­un­teers who worked long hours to achieve the results that will ben­e­fit all amateurs.