In my reports to the Board on WRC preparation, I have tried to stress that we have a difficult path to a favorable outcome on WRC-15 agenda item 1.4, which considers a worldwide secondary allocation to the amateur service somewhere in the range 5250-5450 kHz. That path is still difficult, but a significant first step along that path happened today, when CITEL, the regional telecommunication organization for North and South America, had six member states express support for a proposal to allocate 5275-5450 kHz to the amateur service on a worldwide, secondary basis. The support of six member states is sufficient to ratify the proposal as an Inter-American Proposal (IAP) to WRC-15. There were actually two affirmative proposals to this week's CITEL meeting: the one above from Brazil, and a less generous but well-intended one from Canada, which proposed to allocate 50 kHz in two 25 kHz chunks. Even the Canadian proposal required a lot of persuasive work on the part of RAC, and until last week we thought Canada's proposal would likely be the only one brought to the meeting. We learned that LABRE had persuaded ANATEL, the Brazilian regulator, to make the more generous proposal last week, and that LABRE would have someone at the meeting. I'll leave it to the words (in italics below) of my colleague Jonathan Siverling, WB3ERA, to report what happened on the ground (I am amalgamating from several emails; any error is mine alone and attributable to the amalgamation): Brasil’s contribution has just now become an Inter American Proposal (IAP). The six administrations making it an IAP are: Argentina, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Uruguay. Canada’s contribution, lacking any additional support, will go forward as a Preliminary Proposal (PP). Very large, heavy piles of credit have been earned by the years of efforts of [LABRE's] Flávio A. B. Archangelo (PY2ZX) before this meeting *and* at this meeting, as well as Ricardo Luis Terán (LU4FTV) (ARG) and Hector Carril (ARG) at the meeting this week. Jon doesn't list himself, but he deserves a large, heavy pile of credit too. While the United States position on agenda item 1.4 was to remain silent in light of our domestic disagreement, Jon's years of experience at and universal respect within CITEL give Amateur Radio substantial clout there, and Jon no doubt facilitated the accumulation of support quietly, as he had to do given the party line of the United States. CITEL is but one of six regional organizations that submit regional proposals to the ITU. Two of these, sadly, are almost certain no change supporters, leaving CEPT, ATU, and APT as the next targets to generate affirmative proposals. CITEL and the amateurs on the ground in Mexico have given us badly needed momentum for this effort this week. Candidly, I think anything that comes out of the WRC is likely to be closer to what Canada is proposing (and what RAC fought hard for) than what got adopted as an IAP today, given the difficult path for the rest of the world. But I'd like to be wrong about that, and today gave me hope that I might be. 73 de Brennan N4QX/1