R 162112Z APR 09
FM SECSTATE WASHDC
TO USMISSION GENEVA

UNCLAS STATE 037998 
 
 
PASS IEA FOR DAVID SALAZAR 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: ECPS ITU
SUBJECT: SIXTEENTH MEETING OF THE ITU RADIOCOMMUNICATION 
ADVISORY GROUP, FEBRUARY 4-6, 2009 
 
¶1.  Summary.  The sixteenth meeting of the International 
Telecommunication Union,s (ITU) Radiocommunication Advisory 
Group (RAG) met in Geneva, from 4-6 February 2009, under the 
chairmanship of Mr. J.B. Yao Kouakou (Cote d,Ivoire).  The 
meeting was attended by 104 delegates representing 41 Member 
States, and 12 Sector Members, including two international 
organizations.  The U.S. delegation was led by the Department 
of State.  It consisted of nine delegates, 4 from government 
and 5 from the private sector.  High points of the meeting 
included clarification of working methods used by the Study 
Groups (SG), the scope of the Radiocommunication Bureau (BR) 
staff participation in workshops and seminars sponsored by 
the ITU,  the biennial budget for 2010-2011, and electronic 
document handling.  The U.S. met all of its objectives for 
this meeting.  End  summary. 
 
¶2.  Scope of BR staff participation in BR sponsored 
workshops.  The  United States presented a document giving 
U.S. views on BR staff participation in ITU sponsored 
workshops.  This contribution was prompted by recent BR staff 
presentations on policy matters such as spectrum auctions, 
fees, and trading of interference rights.  The U.S. 
contribution suggested that BR staff refrain from addressing 
policy initiatives in public forums, and instead focus on 
technical, administrative and regulatory issues that are 
within their areas of expertise. 
 
 The U.S. contribution led to a spirited debate on the role 
of BR staff.  The Director of the BR requested the floor 
immediately after the presentation of the contribution to 
defend BR staff participation in workshops, but then stated 
that he would take the U.S. suggestions under advisement and 
personally take responsibility for BR staffs, public 
presentations.  In other interventions, Canada and the Arab 
Group strongly supported the U.S. view, cautioning that 
presentation documents live on beyond the event in which they 
are given, and, noting that policy initiatives are within the 
province of member administrations, and not the ITU. 
European administrations, on the other hand, stated their 
belief that it is acceptable for the ITU staff to generate 
policy initiatives.  Obviously no decision was taken as the 
RAG is only an advisory group, but the Director clearly 
understood the U.S. suggestions and explicitly said he would 
take note.  The European interventions appear to expose a 
significant and serious departure of views on the ITU,s 
role, apparently indicating support for its expansion to 
something beyond service to its membership. 
 
¶3.  Study Questions based on WRC Resolutions or 
Recommendations.  The United States introduced a contribution 
that noted that new study questions based on WRC Resolutions 
or Recommendations are permitted by the Constitution and 
Convention, and that such questions should be allowed when 
direction provided by the WRC is vague.  This document 
resulted in a lengthy debate. In order to provide 
clarification for administrations that indicated they were 
unclear regarding the intent of the U.S. contribution,  the 
U.S. delegation explained that when a WRC gives direction 
through Resolution or Recommendation, No. 149A of the 
Convention and Resolution ITU-R 5-5 provides that ITU-R 
studies may begin without the need for adopting an associated 
study Question.  However, these provisions do not prohibit 
the adoption of a question in situations where WRC direction 
is vague or non-existent.  A study question serves to focus 
the work of the SGs by stating agreed upon technical 
boundaries within which the studies should be conducted. Thus 
it avoids debate at each meeting on whether contributions are 
within the scope of what should be studied.  Despite the 
organization,s own rules, with the exception of Canada, the 
meeting was not willing to clearly state that there is no 
prohibition to adopting a new Study Question on a topic for 
which there exists a WRC Resolution or Recommendation.  The 
meeting did acknowledge that direction from WRCs on study 
matters could be vague, and to address how SGs should proceed 
in these cases, stated that "(T)o ensure that sufficient 
information is provided to the membership on the topic 
concerned, additional information could be included in the 
Summary Records or Chairman,s Reports of the relevant SGs, 
thereby enabling the membership to fully study the topic 
without the need to pursue the adoption and approval of a new 
Question." 
 
¶4.  Studies Undertaken Without underlying Questions. In 
response to a contribution from Canada, the RAG noted that in 
accordance with ITU-R 5-5 Section 10, it is the current 
understanding that once studies are completed the SGs are to 
develop Reports and/or Recommendations based on the studies 
coming from the SGs, whether or not an underlying Question 
exists, and further process them for adoption and approval, 
as appropriate. 
 
¶5.  Referencing the Radio Regulations (RR) in 
Recommendations.  Based on a Canadian contribution, the RAG 
noted that the need to refer to specific provisions of the 
RRs in a Recommendation is a matter to be left to the wisdom 
of SGs and their Chairs, based on a consensus reached by the 
group.  The RAG also noted that there is no prohibition to 
including a specific reference to provisions of the RR in a 
Recommendation, but SGs should avoid interpretations of  the 
referenced RRs. 
 
¶6.  Sending Recommendations for Approval.  RAG took note of a 
Canadian contribution "inviting the Member States attending a 
Study Group meeting and opposing the consideration of a 
Recommendation for adoption to present technical reasons for 
the objection in writing at that meeting."  In this regard, 
RAG, taking into account the relevant part of section 10.2 of 
Resolution ITU-R 1-5, invites the Chairs of the SGs to 
encourage the opposing Member States to give their written 
technical reasons for objecting to a draft Recommendation at 
the meeting where the objection is raised.  RAG noted that if 
this did not occur then the SG or Working Party would be 
unable to address the objection or to further work on the 
Recommendation. 
 
¶7.  Protection Criteria and Sharing Criteria.  A contribution 
from Italy asked the RAG to endorse the role of the SGs in 
defining protection criteria relating to the services covered 
within their scope.  Following many interventions expressing 
views on SG responsibilities for sharing studies and 
protection criteria, the meeting advised that sharing studies 
involving sub-working groups or Working Parties (WPs) from 
more than one SG may include the following cases: 
---    The development of relevant protection criteria 
pertaining to a given radio service should remain within the 
WP (or SG) responsible for the service.  This WP or SG will 
initiate the study in question and liaise with other WPs 
involved to progress the work.  Once the work is mature and 
mutually agreed by the WPs involved, the output in the form 
of a new or revised Recommendation and/or Report, as 
appropriate, would be submitted to the parent Study Group of 
the WP that initiated the study for formal actions on the 
adoption and approval procedures. The final product would 
become part of the SG documentation. 
--- The main objective during the development of sharing 
studies is to continually improve the efficient use of the 
spectrum/orbit resource for the benefit of all users.  This 
is often driven by new technological advances and by new 
applications.  In this case, the role of the WP responsible 
for the new applications is important when conducting the 
sharing studies with the caveat that it is also essential to 
take into consideration the protection requirements of the 
existing systems.  The WP responsible for the new application 
could initiate the sharing studies and liaise with the other 
WPs involved to progress the work.  Once the work is mature 
and mutually agreed by the WPs involved, the output in the 
form of a new or revised Recommendation and/or Report would 
be formally adopted and maintained by the SG responsible for 
the new application. 
 
¶8.    Chair/Vice-Chair (CVC-15).  Dr. Kevin Hughes (Head of 
the SG Department) gave a brief report on the 15th meeting of 
Chairs and Vice-Chairs of the Radiocommunication Study 
Groups.  The business of this meeting covered five topics: 
the status of activities associated with CPM-11 and 
preparations for WRC-11; working methods of SGs; treatment of 
issues involving more than one SG; liaison activities; and an 
oral report on the work in CCV.  Mr. Hughes noted the 
emphasis being placed on electronic working methods within 
the ITU.  He also pointed to an input to the CVC-15 from the 
Chair of SG 4 that discussed delays many of the SGs 
experience in the development and approval of Recommendations 
due to misinterpretations of the working methods outlined in 
Resolution ITU-R-5.  All present agreed to the importance for 
the SGs to produce good quality outputs in a timely manner. 
It noted that the failure to do so could jeopardize the 
relevance of ITU-R Recommendations, particularly for 
industry. 
 
¶9.    Resolution 647.  Resolution 647 (WRC-07), Spectrum 
Management Guidelines for Emergency and Disaster Relief 
Radiocommunication encourages administrations to maintain 
available frequencies for use in the very early stages of 
humanitarian assistance intervention for disaster relief and 
first responders.  It also provides for administrations to 
provide relevant, up-to-date information to the BR concerning 
national frequency allocations and spectrum management 
practices for emergency and disaster relief communications. 
Most administrations have not submitted this information. 
The Department of State will coordinate with the FCC and NTIA 
to submit publicly available information requested by 
Resolution 647, recognizing that some frequencies are 
protected due to national security. 
 
¶10.   Electronic Document Handling (EDH).  The report of the 
Coordinator of the Correspondence Group on EDH was presented 
by Mr. Bruce Gracie.  Of particular note was that the RAG 
recognized the need to make available a limited number of 
paper copies of the documents to delegates upon demand.  RAG 
noted that interpreters also need paper copies to facilitate 
their work when required. 
 
¶11.   Budget.  The RAG noted the report from the Director of 
the Radiocommunication Bureau (BR) on the estimated biennial 
budget for 2010-2011.  The Director explained that the 
figures were preliminary and under discussion within the 
Secretariat.  He indicated that he would be presenting the 
first draft budget proposal for consideration of the 
Management and Budget Group in June based on a balanced 
expense/income budget. 
 
¶12.   WRC-11 preparations.  The Chief of ITU Conferences and 
Publications (C&P) Department provided information on the 
status of the consultations foreseen in Council Resolution 
1291 relating to a definitive choice of venue and dates for 
WRC-11.  Regarding venue, the ITU has received no official 
invitation from a Member State wishing to host WRC-11, and 
therefore WRC-11 will be in Geneva.  As for dates, Council 
2008 noted that the originally proposed dates were 24 
October-18 November 2011.  Council,s attention was drawn to 
the provisions of Resolution 111 (Rev.Antalya, 2006) calling 
for account to be taken of the dates of religious periods 
when drawing up schedules of conferences and assemblies of 
international organizations.  To hold WRC-11 during a period 
that does not overlap with Eid al-Adha holidays, which in 
2011 occurs on 6 November, two options were considered.  Both 
options would necessitate other organizations, who have 
already booked the CICG, to agree to change the dates of 
their conferences.  Consultations to date have not met with 
success, but the Department will continue to attempt to 
change the dates. 
 
¶13.   IARU booklet.  RAG expressed appreciation to the IARU 
for making available to the delegates a booklet containing 
the WRC-11 agenda and relevant Resolutions. 
 
¶14.   Operational Plan.  RAG reviewed the draft ITU-R 
Operational Plan for 2010-2013 and invited the Director to 
collect comments that might be formulated by RAG members 
before the final version is submitted for the 2009 session of 
the Council.  RAG also considered the 2008 Performance Report 
and congratulated the BR for last year,s good results. 
 
¶15.   Date of next meeting.  The next RAG meeting is 
tentatively scheduled for 17-19 February 2010 in Geneva.  The 
definitive dates will be established in coordination with the 
meeting of advisory groups of the two other sectors. 
 
 
CLINTON