Notes on the Sixth Informal Group Meeting, 29 Jan 2003, Geneva

Date : 5 February 2003

Subject : Notes on the seventh meeting of WRC-03 informal group, 29 January 2003, Geneva

Origin: Chairman, Informal Group

The seventh meeting of the informal group for WRC-03 preparation was held on 29 January 2003 in Geneva. The list of participants is given in Annex 1. The following points were discussed.

1. Initial nominations for the posts of chairs and vice-chairs of the WRC, its committees and working groups

The informal group had a first attempt to identify possible chairs and vice chairs for the conference structure. The result of these initial discussions is given in the Table below. Additional nominations would be welcome.

Also, the following preliminary views were noted:

-It would be preferable that among the chairs and vice chairs of the Committees(except the editorial committee) and working groups, any country appears only once.

-For the vice-chairs of committees 4 to 7, it would be expected to include:

• Two vice-chairs from Africa
• Two vice-chairs from region A
• One vice-chair from the Arab Group
• One vice-chair from the RCC
• One vice-chair from the APT
• One vice-chair from Europe.

The upcoming meetings of the regional groups are expected to facilitate nominations for these posts, as well as for the two chairs and four vice-chairs of Committees 2 and 3, and for the posts of the working groups.

It was noted that the most competent candidates should be designated, taking into account an equitable distribution between ITU Regions.

It is noted that final views will be expressed formally by the beginning of the WRC.

WRC-03

1. Structure of WRC-03

A short discussion was held in order to progress on the outstanding issue relating to the structure of the conference, i.e. where to address agenda items 1.11 and 1.26.

The views expressed previously were re-iterated, i.e. :

• Item 1.11 should be addressed together with other MSS issues in WG 5B, since it relates to this type of sharing and Item 1.26 should be addressed together with other FSS/FS issues in WG 5C for the same reason.

• Items 1.11 and 1.26 should be grouped together in WG 4A because the remaining difficulties on these items relate to the regulatory/procedural aspects, which are common to both items (i.e. use of FSS networks for MSS applications), or alternatively, they should be grouped together in either WG 5B or 5C.

A further view was expressed that, since the two agenda items are linked by the possible co-existence in the same band (14 GHz) of a primary allocation for ESVs and secondary allocations to MMSS and AMSS at 14 GHz, they will need to be considered jointly from a regulatory point of view at some point in the conference, hence any delay in such consideration might be detrimental to the successful completion of the work on either item. The view was also expressed that a possible compromise might therefore be to address these issues in WG 5B, with the assistance of WG4A, as appropriate.

However, no consensus was reached on any of these views.

1. Presentation and numbering of proposals to WRC-03

To facilitate the transition to electronic documentation and the handling of proposals at the conference, the suggestion was made to harmonise the presentations of the proposals to WRC-03 by having separate attachments for each agenda item, hyperlinked to a core document, and to number the proposals by agenda items (e.g. EUR/13/1.5/7 would be the seventh proposal of the European document number 13 under Agenda Item 1.5).

This suggestion was supported, but the question was raised of the potential difficulties that would arise if this numbering scheme was not adopted for all proposals, hence it might be too late to implement it at this stage. The BR indicated its intention to further consider this issue.

4.Date and place of next meeting

It was confirmed that the next meeting of the informal group will be held during the next Council meeting, on Tuesday 6 May 2003 at 18h00, in Geneva.

François Rancy

Chairman, Informal Group for WRC-03

ANNEX 1

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

TO THE SEVENTH MEETING OF WRC-03 INFORMAL GROUP

NAME

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