Brennan, thanks for that report. With respect to the following: While we expect the FCC will eventually implement the WRC-15 result, the Commission would not be precluded from maintaining one or more of the existing channels--or authorizing more power within the new allocation--under provision No. 4.4 of the ITU Radio Regulations, which allows administrations to deviate from the international table of allocations on the express condition that harmful interference shall not be caused to services operating in accordance with the Radio Regulations. This is the same provision under which the various domestic arrangements for amateurs are accomplished today. While I tend to doubt that the FCC would be likely to apply No. 4.4 to increase the power within the new allocation, we may be able to build a case for some supplementary channel access with the support of at least FEMA on the government side. Both Ted Okada and Ross Merlin have suggested this possibility to me, and I know the issue has been broached to Mike Corey as well. We will try to further develop this idea so that the Board can consider it as it decides how and when (and perhaps even whether) to ask for the implementation of the WRC-15 allocation. I think that you have laid out a very reasonable plan that we should pursue from the outset to get some relief domestically from the power limitation. How likely the FCC is to apply Provision 4.4 with respect to the power limit is determined in part by our approach and who we can recruit in support of the effort. An early start and some help from FEMA, the Red Cross, NPSTC etc. can't hurt. I think we have a very fine argument for a 4.4 domestic exception based on the initial rationale for the domestic channel allocation at 5 MHz in the first place: communications between mainland US and the Caribbean basin for hurricane relief communications. That requires a certain amount of power to overcome ambient noise at that frequency, especially during Hurricane season. That and a showing of marginal skywave interference potential in a technical exhibit and we have put our best foot forward. Congratulations on this. It is, as I see it a huge win for U.S. Amateur Radio to have a 15 kilohertz contiguous band and it is the culmination of a very long effort by a lot of people and the overcoming of a lot of domestic opposition from NTIA and its agencies all along. 73, Chris W3KD On Fri, Nov 20, 2015 at 12:41 PM, Price, Brennan, N4QX <bprice@arrl.org> wrote:
The substantive output of WRC-15 is slowing considerably as crunch time has been reached on the conference's most divisive issues, including new mobile service allocations for broadband and IMT (modern cellular telephony), spectrum issues related to command and control of unmanned aircraft, and, most notably for Amateur Radio, the agenda for WRC-19. The working group responsible for the future agenda is not progressing efficiently (nor is the rest of the conference), so predictions about the opportunities and challenges the next agenda will provide are premature. The best that I can report is that the following items are under consideration for WRC-19:
1) An effort to globally harmonize the 50 MHz allocation, 2) Consideration of new space operations service allocations for commercial small satellites at VHF and UHF (our 2 meter allocation seems to be safe, but 70 cm may be affected), 3) Consideration of spectrum above 6 GHz for "5G" IMT--it appears our 47 GHz allocation will be among the targets considered, and 10 GHz may yet be, and 4) Consideration of mobile allocations for radio local area networks near 5 GHz, perhaps including parts of the amateur secondary allocation there.
Suffice to say the next cycle will almost certainly require substantial defensive efforts. It is reasonable to think that one of the above defensive issue may work itself out in the next week. It is within possibility that two of them might. If all three of them do, I will eat my hat (with glee).
I have been asked (and have read message board posts asking) how the WRC-15 decision on 5 MHz will affect our access to the existing channels. In the short term, that's an easy question to answer; the FCC's rules remain valid until they are changed, and we all know they tend to change at a glacial pace.
The longer term is harder to predict. While the final acts of WRC-15 will almost certainly come into force on January 1, 2017, it has historically taken the FCC considerably longer to implement them domestically. While we expect the FCC will eventually implement the WRC-15 result, the Commission would not be precluded from maintaining one or more of the existing channels--or authorizing more power within the new allocation--under provision No. 4.4 of the ITU Radio Regulations, which allows administrations to deviate from the international table of allocations on the express condition that harmful interference shall not be caused to services operating in accordance with the Radio Regulations. This is the same provision under which the various domestic arrangements for amateurs are accomplished today.
While I tend to doubt that the FCC would be likely to apply No. 4.4 to increase the power within the new allocation, we may be able to build a case for some supplementary channel access with the support of at least FEMA on the government side. Both Ted Okada and Ross Merlin have suggested this possibility to me, and I know the issue has been broached to Mike Corey as well. We will try to further develop this idea so that the Board can consider it as it decides how and when (and perhaps even whether) to ask for the implementation of the WRC-15 allocation.
One week remains in the conference, so we'll know how things have shaken out by Black Friday.
73 de Brennan HB9/N4QX
Brennan T. Price, N4QX Chief Technology Officer American Radio Relay League PO Box 3470 Oakton VA 22124-9470 Tel +1 860 594-0247 _______________________________________________ arrl-odv mailing list arrl-odv@reflector.arrl.org https://reflector.arrl.org/mailman/listinfo/arrl-odv
-- Christopher D. Imlay Booth, Freret & Imlay, LLC 14356 Cape May Road Silver Spring, Maryland 20904-6011 (301) 384-5525 telephone (301) 384-6384 facsimile W3KD@ARRL.ORG