The ITU's World Radiocommunication Conference 2015 (WRC-15 kicked off in Geneva and is scheduled to run through the end of November.
The WRC is held every three to four years to review, and, if necessary, revise the Radio Regulations, the international treaty governing the use of the radio-frequency spectrum and the geostationary-satellite and non-geostationary-satellite orbits.
WRC-15 will address a number of key issues, in particular:
- Mobile broadband communications: Provision of additional frequencies to meet the rapidly growing demand for mobile broadband communications.
- Emergency communications and disaster relief: Allocation of frequencies for advanced public protection and disaster relief.
- Monitoring the environment and climate change: New allocations for earth-exploration satellite services with higher resolution radar imagery for improved global environmental monitoring.
- Unmanned aircraft and wireless avionics systems: Spectrum for the aeronautical sector, related to the use of unmanned aircraft systems, and wireless avionics intra-communications to allow for the heavy and expensive wiring used in aircraft to be replaced by wireless systems.
- Global flight tracking for civil aviation: WRC-15 will consider allocating spectrum for global flight tracking for improved safety.
- Enhanced maritime communications systems: Maritime communications, facilitating the use of on-board digital transmissions and automatic identification system on vessels for improved navigation safety.
- Road Safety: Allocation of frequencies for short range, high-resolution radars for collision avoidance systems in vehicles for increased road safety.
- Operation of satellite systems: Allocation of spectrum for broadband satellite systems; providing for earth stations on-board moving platforms, such as ships and aircraft; and improving coordination procedures to make more efficient use of spectrum and satellite orbits.
- Universal Time: examining the feasibility of achieving a continuous reference time-scale, by modifying Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
