I want to give you an update on some of the
activities our Technical Relations Office has been involved in. Rinaldo and his
group were not mentioned in my previous report concerning our success with the
Ross amendment being included in the telecom bill because Paul's primary focus
is not on the Hill, but rather numerous other activities in Washington and ITU
Geneva to achieve our goals in other areas.
One important area where Rinaldo has been
directly involved is interfacing with and assisting coordination of the
interference complaints from Manassas, VA. Immediately following the recent FCC
enforcement action in Manassas, Paul traveled to Manassas and met with all of
the radio amateurs identified in the FCC action and provided as-needed
assistance in the development of their response. Paul also provides a valuable
technical review of all of the material prepared by our lab prior to submittal
to FCC pertaining to (among other things) BPL.
In addition, the TRO has been extensively
involved in preparations for WRC-07, scheduled to convene sometime in late 2007.
As you recall, at stake for amateur radio at this conference is the 4-10 MHz
region that could impact the 7200-7300 MHz amateur allocation that we have here
in the U.S., as well as a few other countries. It has always been the IARU
position, as well as ARRL, that the Amateur Radio Service requires a 300 KHz
world wide primary allocation at 7 MHz. Our efforts specific to
this upcoming WRC continues our effort to obtain it. Various meetings are
held weekly that our TRO is involved in. We're quite fortunate to have seats on
the committees, Working Parties, and Group's (and in some cases chair some of
these) that are directly involved in developing the WRC's agenda as well as the
U.S. position on these matters.
Of course, BPL is an international issue
that ITU is addressing and one other item that may become an issue at WRC-07
that would impact our 1296 MHz band is the Galileo satellite system. The
TRO is following these closely as well.
Paul also has continued drafting documents relating to a potential 5 MHz allocation at
WRC-07. There is also on-going discussion with
NTIA, pursuing an expansion of our 5 MHz privileges here in the U.S. that we
have previously reported to you.
We have had some
inquiries from FCC OET concerning our Part 5 application for 500 kHz. Paul
has assisted Chris with our technical response.
Bottom line - the Rinaldo and the TRO are
extremely busy with a wide array of activities.
73
Joel W5ZN