The World Radio Conference (WRC) in Geneva last week, continued t...

that ESVs should be covered as a footnote in the ITU Radio Regulations and that those operations were an application in the fixed satellite service (FSS), even though the system was a broadband operation on a moving ship. Some administrations, including Arab states, have argued that ESVs should fall under the Maritime Mobile Satellite Service because they operated on moving platforms. An ITU roundup of last week’s developments at the conference, which ends July 4, said “fundamental” differences remained on whether to treat ESVs as an FSS or MSS service. “The Arab states say that in 1997, they asked whether ESVs would be mobile or stationary, and the answer was that they would be stationary,” the ITU said. “But after 2000 they were told that these stations will in fact be mobile,” leading to the Arabs’ concern that ESVs be treated as a mobile maritime satellite service. The allocations committee last week approved a resolution on the special requirements of countries that were geographically small or had narrow operating FSS earth stations at 13.75-14 GHz. The resolution would allow FSS dishes in that spectrum to shrink to 1.2 m from 4.5 m if certain power limits sought by the U.S. and others were met to protect military radars. The ITU said the resolution on small countries “encourages administrations deploying maritime and land mobile radiolocation systems in the band 13.75-14 GHz to rapidly reach bilateral agreements relating to the operation of FSS earth stations in this band with the administrations of those geographically small and narrow countries deploying these FSS earth stations.” A separate compromise was reached on high-altitude platform stations (HAPs), systems that can provide wide-area fixed wireless services from balloon-like devices in the stratosphere of the earth. The ITU said it already had received notification of plans to deploy those systems at 47.2-47.5 GHz and 47.9-48.2 GHz. Individual administrations can decide to deploy the systems, but their rollout can affect neighboring countries. The ITU said the compromise included resolution of the potential use of the bands 27.5- 28.35 GHz and 31-31.3 GHz by HAPs in the fixed service. “Results of some ITU-R studies indicate that in these bands, sharing between the fixed service systems using HAPs and other conventional fixed service systems in the same area will require that appropriate interference mitigation techniques are developed,” the ITU said. The ITU Radio Bureau will continue studies, including power limits applicable to HAPs ground stations to facilitate sharing with space station receivers. It also will study sharing between systems using HAPs and the radioastronomy service. The allocations committee agreed to change 2 footnotes to allow the use of HAPs in the fixed service within 300 MHz at 27.5- 28.35 GHz and at 31-31.3 GHz in certain countries.