Brussels, 31/10/2007 (Agence Europe) - Increasing demand for radio frequencies and the introduction of an international regulatory framework for radio frequencies will be high on the agenda at the ITU World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-07) which opened in Geneva, Switzerland, on 22 October, four years after the first WRC conference. More than 3000 specialists will spend four weeks examining the issue, to which solutions are becoming more urgent due to the development of wireless applications across the board. The conference will examine the most rational and efficient ways of making use of the limited range of radio frequencies and of managing satellite orbits, which will be decisive and ever more valuable in terms of reaching global connectivity targets in the twenty-first century. The agenda includes more than two dozen points covering virtually all land and space radiocommunications services and applications. Dr Toure, Secretary General of the ITU (International Telecommunications Union), which is organising the conference, commented that if people really want to achieve the Millennium Development Targets by 2015, in other words in less than 8 years, they will have to use ITC. He explained that IT and communications technology was omnipresent and had a serious impact on all sectors of the economy.
In a press release, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) expresses concern at the decisions that might be taken at the WRC-07 and could damage digital television. One point on the WRC-07's agenda is the identification of frequency bands for international mobile telecommunications (IMT) services like UMTS third generation mobile phones. The frequencies foreseen for such applications, namely UHF Bands IV and V (470-862 MHz) in ITU Region 1 (Europe, Africa and some parts of the Middle East) are already being used for TV broadcasting, and this could lead to interference or even block the deployment of digital television. The EBU is urging the ITU to postpone examination of this issue until the 2011 WRC, to give enough time to allow current research to get a better take on the problems and find acceptable solutions. (I.L.)