There are three important agenda items at the upcoming World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-19) in October, panelists told the annual SATELLITE show Wednesday: Spectrum, spectrum, and spectrum.
The infamous agenda item 1.13, which calls for allocating additional spectrum blocks — some currently used by the satellite industry — to terrestrial mobile services for 5G, is likely to be highly contentious at the four-week ITU conference.
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“We do have concerns about putting unnecessary restrictions on satellite,” said Jennifer Manner, SVP of regulatory affairs for EchoStar. EchoStar is already building its next generation Jupiter-3 satellite due to launch in 2021. “It’s very hard to change things, as folks here know, once you’re into construction,” Manner said, making grandfathering periods essential.
Kenneth Turner, deputy director of spectrum policy at the Pentagon CIO’s office, predicted “many late nights … tough deliberations and negotiations” and said “there are no easy answers.”
NTIA’s Charles Glass, a WRC veteran, predicted agenda item 1.13 would ultimately get dealt with: “There’s no agenda item that the conference and the administrations are more committed to solving than 1.13 … Everyone will be working towards a common solution that provides the least impact on incumbent systems while maximizing the economic opportunities.”
Glass added a word of caution: “The real fight at every conference is the agenda item you don’t pick as your priority agenda item. There hasn’t been a single conference that I’ve been at where we haven’t been surprised by an agenda item we thought was going to be peacefully solved in week one and in week four, at 11.59 pm on the last day, we’re still talking about it.” VS
