WRC-2000 Reaches Agreements For Mobile, Internet, Navigation, And Broadcast Satellite Services

The 2000 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC 2000) ended June 2 with agreements reached on GSO/NGSO spectrum sharing, global positioning satellite spectrum use, a new satellite broadcast spectrum allocation plan for Europe, Africa and Asia, and agreement on IMT-2000 standards. The WRC is the international forum where Member States come together to revise the international Radio Regulations treaty, which establishes allocations to over 40 radiocommunication services and provides the technical, operational and regulatory conditions for the use of the radio frequency spectrum and satellite orbits. Conference are held every two to three years with the purpose of reaching consensus on changes in the Regulations.

Agreement was reached regarding the conditions under which non-geostationary satellites (NGSO) will operate in harmonization with geosynchronous (GSO) satellites . The agreement balances the need to protect GSO networks, ensuring that GSO operators can continue to deliver the range of communications services from long-distance and international telephony to television and broadband Internet applications, while allowing new NGSO systems to operate without undue constraints. The new non-GSO systems propose to deliver new 'broadband' services which have the potential to deliver Internet and multimedia applications to homes and businesses anywhere in the world. The decisions of the Conference include some limits on earth stations of GSO networks and power limits on non-GSO systems to enable their co-existence without unacceptable interference. These power limits provide a quantitative measure of what is unacceptable and defines the rules of sharing in the Ku band (10-18 GHz). As a result, both GSO and non-GSO operators can proceed with the deployment of their systems to provide advanced services to their customers. France’s SkyBridge will be the first NGSO system to benefit from this agreement.

WRC-2000 approved additional spectrum allocations for the radionavigation-satellite service which will be used to support a new satellite positioning system - Europe's Galileo, as well as add spectrum to the two current systems, Russia's Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) and the US Global Positioning System (GPS). The additional spectrum ensures protection of the GPS and GLONASS signals, in addition to providing them with an opportunity to evolve into second-generation more precise systems, while providing room for Europe's new system.

A new broadcasting-satellite plan for Europe, Africa and the Asia-Pacific was adopted that permits direct satellite TV broadcasting signals to be delivered to a growing customer base. The new Plan allocates, in general, one orbital position per country in Europe and Africa from which an equivalent of 10 analog channels can be delivered. For Asia and Australasia, 12 analog channels are available per country's orbital position. The decisions of WRC-2000 secure an economic capacity for each country to take up whenever market conditions are ripe without the fear of a shortage of spectrum in bands which are highly in demand by rapidly growing space-based systems and a host of other services.

Additional spectrum allocation for third-generation International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT-2000) was agreed upon. IMT-2000 is intended to bring high-quality mobile multimedia telecommunications to a worldwide mass market. The accord provides for three common bands, available on a global basis for countries wishing to implement the terrestrial component of IMT-2000. The agreement provides for a high degree of flexibility to allow operators to evolve towards IMT-2000 according to market and other national considerations. Making use of existing mobile and mobile-satellite frequency allocations, it does not preclude the use of these bands for other types of applications or by other services to which these bands are allocated, a key factor that enabled the consensus to be reached. While the decision of the Conference globally provides for the immediate licensing and manufacturing of IMT-2000 in the common bands, each country will decide on the timing of availability at the national level according to need. This high degree of flexibility will also enable countries to select those parts of the bands where sharing with existing services is the most suitable, taking existing licenses into account.

A proposal to reduce the number of applications for "paper" satellites, satellites proposed, but which never get built, was rejected. Paper satellites have clogged the ITU filing process in recent years. This year's WRC was unable to reach consensus on an approach to solve this problem.

WRC 2000, which ran from May 8 through June 2, in Istanbul, attracted 2037 delegates from 150 countries including 83 companies registered as part of their national delegations and 326 observers from 95 organizations (operators, manufacturers, international organizations and telecommunications-related organizations) - a 30% increase over WRC-97.

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