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World Radiocommunication Conference Preparations |
WRCs are organised as a continuing cycle of conferences held at 2-3 year intervals. Most of the ITU's 189 Member States and many observer organisations participate in these conferences, which last for 4 weeks and produce amendments to the Treaty text of the International Radio regulations, as well as numerous related Recommendations and Resolutions. Over 2000 delegates participated in the last WRC held in Istanbul in May 2000. The next WRC in the cycle will be held in June 2003, Geneva.
Within the ITU-R, the Study Groups play a major role in defining the technical bases for the work of WRCs through the Conference Preparatory Meeting (CPM) process. The Director of the Radiocommunication Bureau is responsible for coordinating the preparatory work of the Study Groups and the Bureau, and then communicating the results of this preparatory work to the Member States and Sector Members as a draft CPM Report. Based on consideration of the draft report and the comments and further proposals of Member States and Sector Members at a CPM held some six months prior to each WRC, the Director prepares a consolidated final CPM report to the WRC. The CPM report may include proposals of a regulatory nature in addition to the technical presentation. However, proposals of a regulatory nature can be also handled through the Special Committee for Regulatory and Procedural Matters (SCRPM), which may submit its own report to the CPM. Both the SCRPM and the CPM have the status of an ITU-R Study Group.
The UK preparations for WRCs are managed by the International Frequency Policy Group (IFPG). As the top level UK co-ordinating committee, reporting directly to Ministers, the IFPG is the final authority for approving UK submissions to the CEPT and the ITU concerning WRC matters. The IFPG operates through a number subcommittees, which it establishes to match the scope of the WRC agenda. The role of the subcommittees is essentially that of co-ordination, planning and finalising draft inputs and briefs for the CPG and its Project Teams. The subcommittees may tailor their membership to their immediate needs and the intention is that the subcommittees should seek to achieve a wider involvement from the private sector in WRC preparations.
The detailed technical preparations for WRCs are conducted through the UK ITU-R study groups. Because so many WRC topics now involve new sharing scenarios, it is increasingly common that several groups may have an interest in each individual agenda item. To ensure that issues are handled efficiently, UK co-ordinators have been appointed to provide the leading role on each topic. Working through the existing UK study groups, the UK co-ordinators have the responsibility for ensuring progress, avoiding duplication and making certain that any regulatory/allocation crossover issues are treated effectively and fairly within the IFPG structure.
At the European level, preparations for WRCs are co-ordinated within the European region as part of the general radiocommunications remit of the European Radiocommunications Committee (ERC) of the CEPT. The ERC brings together the radio regulatory authorities in Europe and is the Committee responsible for administrative, radio regulatory and radio spectrum matters. The ERC operates according to an agreed work programme, and is supported by three permanent working groups which report to the ERC on the specific aspects of frequency management (WGFM), spectrum engineering (WGSE) and the regulation (i.e., licensing, free circulation and use, etc.) of radiocommunications systems (WGRR).
The size and scope of the activities of the ERC, grew so rapidly that the European Radiocommunications Office (ERO) was established in May 1991 to support the Committee. Located in Copenhagen, the main task of the ERO is to assist the ERC in harmonising the future demands for radio spectrum in Europe in consultation with users, manufacturers operators and service providers.
However, this structure could not deal adequately within the specialised preparations for WRCs now that a continuous program of work has to be maintained in order to meet the tight deadlines imposed by the two to three-yearly cycle of Conferences.
A permanent and largely autonomous working group known as the Conference Preparatory Group (CPG) was therefore established in 1994 to plan and co-ordinate European preparations for WRCs. The CPG was chaired first by Malcolm Johnson and his period of office covered both WRC-95 and WRC-97. The chairmanship for WRC-2000 passed to Mr J-S Strick, and Mr F Rancy, was recently elected chairman for the WRC-2003 preparations.
The European Commission and other European bodies with an interest in telecommunications, participate in the CEPT preparations. In particular, the European Union has recognised CEPT as the competent body to carry out European preparations for ITU radio conferences. The result is that most European countries now rely extensively on the CEPT preparations to determine their national positions for WRCs.
To avoid duplication in the CEPT preparations, CPG allocates tasks as far as possible to the three working groups of the ERC. The wide variety of work involved in the new WRC structure however means that CPG needs to set up a small number of Project Teams either to deal with specialised topics or to co-ordinate activities across several of the ERC working groups and their specialist project teams. The CPG Project Teams liaise, and seek advice from the ERC working groups as appropriate and in return co-ordinate progress and aim to eliminate duplication of effort. In addition individual topic co-ordinators are appointed to monitor and chase progress on the main topics of the WRC-97 agenda.
Overall co-ordination, however, is the function of the CPG, which is responsible for the final approval of European Common Proposals to WRCs. The CPG also develops a comprehensive Brief for each conference. This gives the CEPT line on each agenda item, together with background information and, where appropriate, comments on proposals from other countries. As a result of such extensive preparations, there is little need for any separate individual national proposals from any European administration.
Although the difficulties of regional co-ordination should not be underestimated, there are considerable benefits in being able to consolidate over a period of two to three years, the disparate views of all the European countries. It makes the task of consolidating world-wide views during conferences that much easier.
During WRC-95 it became evident that other regions were also becoming well co-ordinated Europe welcomed this trend because early interaction between the regional organisations in their preparations for conferences was seen as essential to reducing divergences between the various proposals to conferences and avoiding any misunderstandings as to the objectives of the proposals. Informal groups involving key players from regional groups were first established to prepare for WRC-97. The role of the informal groups was further strengthened for WR-2000 and all the regional groups now see this method of working as essential to resolving contentious problems before arriving at a WRC, especially in view of the trend to towards ever longer agendas.
UK contact for WRC preparations is John Shaw: John.Shaw@ra.gsi.gov.uk
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