WRC-12 to Start 23 January 2012

The World Radiocommunication Conference 2012 (WRC-12) is being held in Geneva, Switzerland from 23 January to 17 February 2012.

The Australian delegation, led by the ACMA, will include ACMA Chairman, Chris Chapman, for the first week of the conference and Maureen Cahill, General Manager Communications Infrastructure, is operational Head of the Australian delegation.

The delegation will include representatives from government and industry. Government agencies represented will be the Department of Defence; Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy; Airservices Australia; the Australian Maritime Safety Authority; the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO. On the industry side, NBN Co, Free TV Australia, Foxtel, Qualcomm, Optus, Telstra, the Wireless Institute of Australia, Inmarsat and Intelsat will be among the organisations represented.

Dale Hughes VK1DSH is representing the WIA and the amateur service.

There are 35 agenda items for WRC-12, including agenda Item 1.23 "to consider an allocation of about 15 kHz in parts of the band 415–526.5 kHz to the amateur service on a secondary basis, taking into account the need to protect existing services".

Some idea of the extent of the Conference can be gathered from an ACMA release, which points out that based on previous WRCs, the 2012 event is expected to attract over 3,000 delegates, include 170 ITU Member States (governments), deal with over 15,000 pages of proposals translated into six languages and conduct 1,200 separate meetings.

Dale will be reporting regularly to the WIA Board.

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