The German city of Stralsund hosted the 31 May-3 June fourth meeting of the CPG07 group, chaired by Sweden. This CEPT working group is in charge of European preparation for the 2007 World Radiocommunications Conference (WRC07).
The meeting saw the revision and approval of the briefs concerning all the WRC07 agenda points, with identification of some points of disagreement between CEPT and other regional organisations.
The United Kingdom?s Stephen Bond was appointed chairman of project team PT3 and vice-chair of the CPG group. He replaces Terry Jeacock, who will this month retire from the position he holds in the English administration.
New co-ordinators were also appointed for items 1.3, 1.14 and 1.18 of the WRC07 agenda, to wit: item 1.3 - Emanuele D´Andria, Itália; item 1.14 - Jaap Steenge, the Netherlands; and item 1.18 - Nadège Lecorché, France.
Bearing in mind that the WRC presidency has rotated among the different Regions of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and that in principle the next conference will be overseen by a representative of Region B (Europe), this meeting identified two possible candidates for that nomination: Mike Goddard of the United Kingdom and Chris van Diepenbeek of the Netherlands.
Limiting the European proposal to one candidate was deemed premature in this phase. A decision was made to postpone CEPT?s choice until the next CPG group meeting to enable scrutiny of the eventual support for each of the possible European candidates in CEPT and outside Europe.
With an eye to the conference schedule, the chair reminded the various project teams of the need to start drawing up the European common proposals (ECPs).
Some 92 participants attended the meeting, representing 24 administrations, eight CEPT-recognised operators, the European Commission, the European Radiocommunications Office (ERO), the ITU Radiocommunications Sector (ITU-R), EUMETSAT (European Organisation for the Exploration of Meteorological Satellites), NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation), RCC (Regional Commonwealth Countries), Asia-Pacific Telecommunity (APT) and the Inter-American Telecommunications Commission (CITEL).
The next CPG meeting will be held in Spain on 17-20 January 2006.
