ARRL Staffers Meet in Geneva to Discuss BPL, Handbook
ARRL Chief Executive Officer David Sumner, K1ZZ just finished up a meeting of International Telecommunication Union-Radio Communication Sector (ITU-R) Working Party 1A (WP 1A) in Geneva, Switzerland. This group, responsible for spectrum engineering techniques within Study Group 1 (spectrum management), worked on a document that may eventually become what's called a "preliminary draft new report" on the impact of power line telecommunications (PLT, or BPL on this side of the Atlantic) on radiocommunication systems operating below 80 MHz.
The International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) is interested in ensuring that the report accurately reflects the sensitivity of the amateur services to interference from BPL. Jon Siverling, WB3ERA, of the ARRL Technical Relations Office, is on the US delegation.
ITU-R Working Party 8A (WP 8A) also just finished up their meeting in Geneva. This group is responsible for most of the land mobile services, plus the amateur and amateur-satellite services. Working Group 1 (WG 1), a subset of WP 8, approved the Amateur Service and Amateur-Satellite Service Handbook that will be published by the ITU. The Handbook is an overview of the activities of the amateur services, along with existing ITU texts that relate to the two services. This will be published by the ITU in the six official UN and ITU languages (English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian and Chinese), and will be a useful guide to administrations in countries where the amateur services may not be well developed. IARU President Larry Price, W4RA, represented the IARU. ARRL Chief Technology Officer Paul Rinaldo, W4RI, is on the US delegation and is a member of WP 8A, as is Sumner. Rinaldo is chairman of WG 1.
Page last modified: 01:52 PM, 26 Jun 2007 ET
Page author: awextra@arrl.org
Copyright © 2007, American Radio Relay League, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Previous: The K7RA Solar Update
Next: Astronaut Suni Williams, KD5PLB, back on Terra Firma
