I returned home yesterday evening after a most memorable and successful 33 days in Geneva for the 2012 World Radiocommunication Conference and the first Conference Preparatory Meeting for WRC-15. It will be a while before I can put together a comprehensive report and a QST article, but I wanted to express the following thoughts before descending into the accumulation of work back here in Newington. In my tenure as an ARRL staffer involved in the IARU, the 1979 World Administrative Radio Conference will always stand out as an extraordinary success. We still sometimes hear 10, 18 and 24 MHz referred to as "the WARC bands" even though 30 years have passed. The 2003 World Radiocommunication Conference ranks second because we managed something that had never done before: to move HF broadcasting out of 100 kHz of spectrum and thereby greatly improve the usefulness of the 40 meter band. WRC-12 had so many highlights that it is difficult to decide which was the greatest: * Joe Taylor, K1JT's speech to the Plenary at the end of the second week of the conference * The celebration of the 50th anniversary of the International Amateur Radio Club, 4U1ITU, in the magnificent Popov Room in the ITU Tower attended by past and present Secretaries General and Radiocommunication Bureau Directors * Our fending off HF oceanographic radars from being in or even adjacent to amateur bands * The new allocation at 472 kHz * An agenda item for WRC-15 to consider a possible secondary allocation to the amateur service in parts of the 5250-5450 kHz band * Successful handling of a potentially difficult agenda item concerning pico- and nano-satellites (this topic is too complex to get into in this memo) In addition there were: * The first 1296 MHz EME QSOs from 4U1ITU using K1JT's software, with K1JT himself at the controls * More than 13,600 QSOs made from 4U1WRC * More than 3,500 QSOs made during the ARRL CW DX Contest from 4U1ITU Amateur Radio is just a small part of the world's telecommunication community and is commercially insignificant compared to the satellite and mobile (wireless broadband) interests. Yet, we have achieved a position within the International Telecommunication Union as a respected radio service. One tiny measure of this is that Veena Rawat of Canada, the WRC-03 Chairman who pushed through the compromise that gave us our 40-meter improvement and was highly visible at WRC-12 on behalf of Research in Motion, has requested that her expired Canadian amateur license be reinstated with the call sign VA3ITU. Another is that Secretary General Touré, HB9EHT, was wearing just one lapel pin on the final day of the conference: the IARC-50 pin. This position was not achieved overnight or through the efforts of a single individual or small group. It was achieved through the shared passion and sense of purpose of an extraordinary band of people from many countries and diverse backgrounds, some with IARU titles and many not, nearly of them volunteers, who have worked through the IARU over the decades to present a highly professional visage and to ensure that the participation on behalf of the amateur and amateur-satellite services is of a quality that is equal to that of any other radio service, and better than some. I can't begin to tell you how proud I am to be a part of this team. 73, David Sumner, K1ZZ