ITU Regional Radiocommunications Conference
RRC -06 (2nd Session)
Geneva, 15 May - 16 June 2006
Report on 1st week
1 Introduction
The second session of RRC -06 opened on 15 May. The main goal of this 2nd session of the ITU Regional Radiocommunications Conference is to plan terrestrial digital broadcasting services in Europe, Africa and some Asian countries.
2 Organisation of the Conference
The conference, which will end on 16 June, started its first week of work with the approval of the conference?s structure and organisation, making the following nominations for the positions of conference chairperson and vice chairperson:
RRC -06 Conference Chairman: K. Arasteh (Islamic Republic of Iran);
Conference vice-chairpersons: A.Beskorovayny (Russian Federation), J.Doeven (Holland), K. J. B. Yao (Ivory Coast) e N. Kisrawi (Syrian Arab Republic).
Committee 1 (Organisation)
Responsible for coordinating all matters related to the organisation of the work and planning of the meeting (No. 67 of the General Rules).
It is made up of the conference chairman and vice-chairpersons as well as the chairperson and vice-chairpersons of the Committees.
Committee 2 (Credentials)
Responsible for checking the credentials of delegates and reporting to the Plenary Meeting (No. 67 of the General Rules).
Chairperson: L. Hamdallah (Egypt)
Vice-Chairperson: V. Burmistenko (Ukraine).
Committee 3 (Budget Control)
Responsible for the organisation and facilities available to delegates, for examining and approving the accounts for expenditure incurred during the conference and reporting to the Plenary its forecast for total expenditure of the conference. Also responsible for making estimates of the financial implications arising from the execution of decisions taken by the conference (nos . 71 - 74 of the General Rules).
Chairperson: E. Owusu-Adansi (Ghana)
Vice-Chairpersons: M.Khalmuratova (Uzbekistan) and A. Müller (Germany)
Committee 4 (Planning)
Based on the proposals of the Administrations and on the resolutions of the 1st session of the conference, including the annex report to Resolution 1, and having also in consideration the reports of the Intersessional Planning Group (IPG ) and the report of the Director the Radiocommunication Board (RB ) about intersessional work, the committee is responsible for directing planning activities and drawing up the respective frequency plans.
Chairperson: D. Sauvet-Goichon (France)
Vice-Chairpersons: A. Nalbandian (Armenia), T. Usi (Tanzania) e M. Bessi (Morocco)
Committee 5 (Regulatory committee)
Based on the proposals of the Administrations and on the resolutions of the 1st session of the conference, including the annex report to Resolution 1, and having also in consideration the results of ITU studies, the report of RPG and the report of the director of the BR about intersessional work, the committee is responsible for developing a project for a new regional agreement for the planning area of RRC -06 and for the relevant frequency bands.
Chairperson: S. Djematene (Algeria)
Vice-Chairpersons: J. Edane Nkwele (Gabon), D. O. von der Emden (Switzerland) e V. Glushko (Russian Federation).
Committee 6 (Editorial committee)
Responsible for perfecting the form of the texts prepared in the various committees, without altering the sense, for submission to the Plenary Meeting (Nos . 69 and 70 of the General Rules).
Chairperson: François SILLARD (France)
Vice-Chairpersons: E. Val (United kingdom), C. Menéndez Argüelles (Spain), I. Mozharov (Russian Federation) e M. Sadeq (Qatar).
Working Group of the Plenary
Responsible for considering and reviewing the assumptions of the work relevant to the establishment of frequency plans for terrestrial digital broadcasting in the 174-230 MHz and 470-862 MHz bands
Chairperson: S. Perpar (Slovenia)
Vice-Chairpersons: H. Mbega (Cameroon), B. Nurmatov (Kyrgyzstan) and M.Ghommam Malek (Tunisia).
3 Progress of Work
3.1 Planning Process
The conference decided not to consider analogue television while establishing a plan for digital broadcasting. In order to identify the impact of digital broadcasting on analogue television during the transition period, it was decided to carry out complimentary technical analysis for the four planning drafts that will be carried out during the conference.
Working Group of the Plenary finished its work very quickly, having decided that the technical basis for developing the new plan will be the same used for the development for the draft plan prepared during the intersessional period.
The signing of administrative declarations also made it possible for various problems of incompatibility detected during the planning exercises to be surmounted.
The deadline initially set for sending the requisites to the conference was 31 October 2005, but in order to allow consideration of later negotiations, 21 April 2006 was accepted as a new deadline, subject to confirmation by the conference. However, many administrations took advantage of this change to unexpectedly increase their requisites, and after long discussions at the conference it was decided to use the requisites of 21 April, following the commitment of a number of administrations to substantially reduce their requisites.
During the first week, many negotiations were held between the various countries in order to surmount difficulties and prepare the first draft of the plan which was developed over the last weekend.
3.2 Text of the Agreement
The structure of the agreement was approved by committee 5, following the European proposal. It will be comprised of 12 articles and 6 technical annexes.
Some of the text has already been approved, with some articles covering the following more controversial subjects, still subject to discussion
Article 4
- Whether the identification of affected administrations should be based on territorial criteria or on consignments or selection;
- Whether the principle of implicit agreement or explicit disagreement should be accepted;
Article 5
- Whether a reference to article 11 of the Radio Regulations should be included or a clear notification article;
- Whether or not it should be possible for a station to enter operations on a non-interference basis when the modification process is not successfully concluded.
Europe has proposed texts for the various agreement annexes, although due to its complexity, annex 4 still needs some discussions of the details.
3.3 Conference Costs
The decisions taken by the conference could result in additional work for the Radiocommunication Board with the maintenance of the plan and the development of specific software necessary for the maintenance of the plan. However every effort is being made by Europe, so that this additional work does not result in an increase of the ITU budget.
3.4 Revision of the 1961 Stockholm agreement
The mini conference for the revision of the 1961 Stockholm agreement, opened on Saturday, 20 May. RRC-06 sent this conference a memo with the following indications:
- The analogue plan associated with the new agreement will consist of stations published in ST-61 updates 16 May 2006;
- Channel M5 (170-177MHz), for Morocco, will be included in the analogue plan associated with the new agreement;
- The dates forecast the application and entering into force of the agreement are 17 June 2006 and17 June 2007, respectively.
4 Conclusion
The work of the first week of the conference was marked by cooperation between all countries involved, with an attempt to resolve some of the outstanding problems. It should be noted that in as far as the questions already decided by the conference are concerned, European Common Proposal was in the most part accepted, and as such the outcome can so far be considered positive for Europe. On the other hand there is still a lot of work to be done before a plan can be developed that is acceptable to everyone.
