The ninth meeting of the Maritime Forum Group of the working group on Frequency Management (WGFM) was held last 17-19 September in Constanta, Romania, chaired by Jaap Steenge of the Netherlands.
The Maritime Forum Group's activity mostly concerns issues in the scope of maritime mobile service and maritime radio-navigation.
Various issues were covered at this working meeting, of which the following stand out:
- harmonisation of personal radio equipment, including automatic identification system for search and rescue transmission (AIS-SART); man overboard devices (MOB); automatic man overboard identification system (AIS-MOB); automatic identification system for emergency position-indicating radio beacons (EPIRB-AIS); very high frequency (VHF) portable radios with digital selective calling (DSC) and global navigation by satellite system (GNSS);
- actions to carry out to eliminate illegal emissions originating in several CEPT countries. These illegal emissions were detected per results of the monitoring campaign conducted by project team 22 (PT22) of the Frequency Management working group (WGFM) and mainly involve the maritime emergency frequencies 6215 kHz and 6312 kHz. The national regulatory authorities (NRAs) absent from the meeting will be contacted to take measures;
- revision of ERC DEC (99)01 concerning harmonisation of material for General Operator's Certificate (GOC) and Restricted Operator's Certificate (ROC) exams; this work should be completed by the end of next year;
- accompaniment of matters associated to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), specifically results of the Maritime Safety Committee meeting (MSC 92), and preparation of the next meeting of the IMO group of experts of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on maritime radiocommunication issues;
- consultation of administrations about the frequencies used for on-board communications in territorial waters, after which a summary document was produced. The results will be forwarded to the Conference Preparatory Group (CPG PTC) responsible for studying agenda item 1.15 of the 2015 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-15) and some of the results will be posted on the European Communications Office (ECO) website;
- proliferation of power line telecommunications (PLT) equipment and the possible impact on maritime radiocommunication;
- question in the scope of the International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) from working group 5B (WG 5B), specifically concerning MOB and AIS systems, recommendation ITU-R M.493 on DSC for use in maritime mobile service and new draft formats for maritime mobile service identity (MMSI).
