Nearly every sector of the economy relies upon the opportunity to effectively utilize the radio spectrum in some way.
Besides the ICT sector, land-based transportation, public safety, maritime and air travel, weather forecasting, news gathering and dissemination, education, space exploration and research, banking, entertainment all use one or more radiocommunication services.
Indeed, radiocommunications enable mobile phone calls, broadcast television programs, satellite navigation, online maps, and much more. It also plays a crucial role in monitoring and transmitting change with regards to ocean temperature, vegetation patterns, water levels in aquifers and greenhouse gases – helping us predict famines, the path of a hurricane, or how the global climate is changing.
Radiocommunication technologies are more and more diverse and pervasive, but they all rely on the same core elements: the availability of radio frequencies for terrestrial-based systems and space-based systems, which also includes their associated orbits, that can be operated free from harmful interference.
Radio Regulations
To ensure this availability, the Radio Regulations, the international treaty governing the use of radio-frequencies and associated satellite orbits allocate specific frequencies for various services and contain detailed technical provisions and regulatory procedures to ensure the rational, equitable, efficient use of frequency and orbit resources.
The ITU has been maintaining this treaty for over 112 years.
From 28 October to 22 November 2019 over 3,000 delegates from most of ITU’s 193 Member States will gather in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, for the 2019 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-19).
The WRC reviews and revises, if necessary, the texts of the Radio Regulations (RR).
The development of international regulations and standards ensure networks are compatible, interoperable, and that they operate without causing or receiving harmful interference to or from adjacent services. They also allow for more affordable services and devices due to economies of scale.
Agenda items of WRC-19 include:
- Additional spectrum for 5G (IMT-2020 in ITU terminology):
- High Altitude Platform Stations (HAPS):
- Terrestrial wireless applications such as aeronautical and maritime communications:
- Radio local area networks (RLANs):
- Intelligent transport systems (ITS) and Railway wireless technologies:
- Satellite systems such as non-geostationary satellite orbits (nonGSO) FSS, and Earth stations in motion (ESIM):
Building consensus
At the WRC-19, global stakeholders will work towards reviewing the regulatory framework and building consensus on additional spectrum allocation/identification for these services, if necessary.
Many of the WRC-agenda items reflect developments and innovations that have great potential to provide coverage for people the hard-to-reach rural and remote areas at an affordable price.
The common objective of the WRC-19 conference is to pave the way for all people, everywhere to benefit from these technologies and participate fully in the digital economy.
(Source: ITU. BT&P publication period: 2019)