WRC PROPOSAL ON IN-FLIGHT SATELLITE INTERNET MOVES FORWARD

The working group, with support of the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity (APT), the Inter-American Telecom Commission (CITEL) and others, agreed to delete language in the allocation that bars aeronautical MSS. ITU studies, directed by a resolution in WRC 2000, concluded that a secondary allocation for aeronautical MSS was possible without interfering with primary services in that band, which include fixed satellite service, radionavigation and fixed and mobile services. The ITU studies cited the feasibility of aeronautical MSS systems’ sharing with services operating under both primary and secondary allocations. New secondary allocations, under ITU rules, must not cause harmful interference to either primary users or existing secondary applications.

The conference opened this week under relatively tight security just one week after protestors to the G-8 summit in nearby Evian disrupted Geneva with demonstrations. Delegates are herded through metal detectors each time they enter the Centre International des Conferences de Geneve, which is adjacent to ITU office buildings. The line to enter the building Tues. morning stretched around the side of the center. As another security precaution, delegates are issued photo ID badges, which are checked by guards on people entering the conference center. Several participants told us the first week of the conference appeared to be busier than usual as delegates struggled to complete an agenda of 48 items, more than double the 22 at WRC 2000. The U.S. said its 172-person delegation was the largest ever to be accredited by a WRC. While the ITU has taken steps to make electronic access to WRC documents easier, including a wireless LAN system with equipment donated by Cisco, numerous delegates still can be seen walking through the conference center carrying large piles of documents.

At the start of the conference, the ITU released a list of administrations that had lost their right to vote, mostly because they were behind in their payments. Countries also can lose that right if they haven’t yet acceded to the ITU’s Constitution and Convention. Voting privileges can be revoked when the amount of money owed is equal to or is more than the contribution due to the union for the last 2 years. The 27 countries or territories that lost their right to vote include Afghanistan, Cambodia, Georgia, Grenada, Iraq, Somalia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe, as well as several members of CITEL, including Argentina, Bolivia and Uruguay.

The U.S.-backed proposal on aeronautical MSS was stalled for a time when several Arab administrations raised concerns that if all parts of the item were addressed by Committee 5, the allocation committee, some regulatory issues might not be handled under the proper jurisdiction (CD June 10 p4). Delegates agreed to a compromise late Mon. in which the allocations committee would approve the proposal first, with Committee 4, which oversees finer regulatory points, then addressing issues under its jurisdiction. Committee 5 Chmn. Alan Jamieson of New Zealand elaborated on that compromise Tues., saying that while his group first had to make the allocation decision, if his panel moved too slowly the regulatory committee could take up the item. On the other hand, if the regulatory committee moved too slowly, Committee 5 could send the item directly to the plenary for a vote, Jamieson said.

An Arabian source said Arab delegations didn’t oppose a secondary allocation for aeronautical MSS, a source from the Arab administrations told us Tues. Rather, they were concerned by the importance of the regulatory details of the proposal -- for example, if a plane using this service took off or landed in a country, whether that administration would have some jurisdiction over its operations. However, the source said, if an aircraft using this service were to fly over a country, particularly a smaller one, there were no regulations an individual nation could impose; the source of interference to ground or other systems would be hard to trace. Arab states submitted a joint proposal that supported a secondary allocation. While the proposal said ITU studies had concluded that the technical limitations of aeronautical MSS (AMSS) would protect primary services at 14-14.5 GHz, it said those studies didn’t outline the regulatory status of an AMSS on a secondary allocation that used a transponder of a primary service. The proposal stipulated that unless the “the treatment of a secondary class of station operating with a primary space station is not resolved properly” in the ITU’s Radio Regulations, the administrations wouldn’t back a secondary allocation. As long as the regulatory committee has a chance to address issues such as footnotes that don’t involve allocation issues, the compromise brokered Mon. appears to ameliorate those concerns, sources said.

Despite the wrangling over ITU jurisdictional lines, the proposal to allow a secondary allocation for aeronautical MSS cleared the working group. Connexion by Boeing already has been authorized by regulators in Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands and Norway to use the Ku-band for that service and Lufthansa and British Airways have tested it. A representative of the Conference of European Postal & Telecommunications (CEPT) Administrations said Tues. that 35 of the group’s member administrations back the allocation, although they recognized that individual countries might seek specific protection limits in separate footnotes. For example, France, Italy and the U.K. proposed individual footnotes they said were designed to complement the CEPT proposal as they would provide measures, mainly in the form of power limits, to protect fixed service or radioastronomy service stations at 14.25-14.5 GHz. Representatives of Australia, China, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Russia, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Uzbekistan said they supported the proposal.

A representative of the International Civil Aviation Administration (ICAO) said his group backed the secondary allocation even though it didn’t directly support safety-of- life services. But he said certain bands used for such operations, like the aeronautical mobile route service, were congested, and a secondary allocation to aeronautical MSS could help alleviate that.

The working group to Committee 5 concluded there was no support for considering additional allocations on a worldwide basis for the nongeostationary satellite (NGSO) mobile satellite service links operating below 1 GHz. A European common proposal had said bands below 1 GHz already were used extensively by existing terrestrial, space and radioastronomy services. The proposal had said congestion of MSS service links below 1 GHz hadn’t been demonstrated. “Furthermore, the experience of MSS below 1 GHz has demonstrated that the growth of the traffic could be accommodated in the existing frequency bands without requirement for an additional allocation,” it said. Several delegates said studies so far hadn’t show that sharing was possible between NGSO MSS narrowband uplinks and terrestrial services.