TOP WRC PLANNERS MULL ‘AGENDA CREEP’ FOR 2003

Obuchowski and others recalled that in the 1990s, WRCs were dominated by a single satellite theme, a trend that morphed into 3G taking a high profile in 2000. “This time it’s a little fuzzier. Perhaps a theme will emerge as the process goes on,” said Brian Fontes, Cingular wireless vp- federal relations: “I look at this as a benefit rather than a harm because often the theme itself takes on a life of its own.”

Fontes, who was WRC ambassador in 1995 and is co-chmn. of the WRC Advisory Committee, called the burgeoning scope of the agenda for this WRC “agenda creep.” The result is a process that becomes more time consuming and expensive for govt. and non-govt. participants, which creates a particular challenge for developing countries that in some cases may have small delegations that can’t afford to attend the entire 4-week conference. He and several other panelists also said the trend to larger agendas also came at a time when the ITU was undergoing its own budgetary belt-tightening. Cutbacks at the ITU have led to a move to hold WRCs every 4 years, instead of every 3 years, meaning the next one is set for 2007. Fontes said he wouldn’t necessarily call the longer cycle a problem, “but it just makes these conferences, and the agendas of these conferences, all the more important because you don’t have the regularity to air these issues.”

Jennifer Manner, senior legal adviser to Comr. Abernathy, agreed the conference wasn’t marked by a single theme. The broader agenda “probably makes this conference more complicated than any conference the United States has been in the recent past,” she said. “Because there’s not really a focal point and it’s going to be very hard to keep the conference going on the straight and narrow.” She said Abernathy had expressed interest in moving forward on the domestic follow-up to WRC decisions as soon as possible. Last month, Abernathy said at the CTIA annual conference that the agency would open a rulemaking on 5 GHz in May, before the start of the conference in June, Manner said. That agenda item proposes a global allocation for wireless local area networks at 5 GHz. A U.S. position on that issue emerged after industry and key govt. agencies agreed on ways to protect military radar at 5250-5725 MHz.

“One of the themes of this conference is how do you control the agenda creep,” said Audrey Allison, Boeing dir.- international regulatory affairs for the Americas. Each WRC sets the agenda for the next conference and discusses a preliminary agenda for the conference after that, she said. Allison said that system was based on WRCs being held every 2 years, meaning technical studies could be prepared over 4 years if necessary. It also had been tied to the 2-year budget cycle of the ITU and the Plenipotentiary conference, which is held every 4 years. “This process has kind of broken down,” she said. One problem is that it’s difficult to tell one country that its agenda item isn’t as important as another country’s agenda item, leading to large agendas that attempt to be inclusive, Allison said. “There is going to be a real push at the conference to stop this trend, in light of the fact that we don’t have the infinite budgets that we thought we had in the past,” she said. A European proposal to study that issue is pending, she said.

One area of concern sparked by longer intervals between conferences is the extent to which they raise the stakes for resolution of a particular issue at a single conference, especially for fast-moving new technologies, Allison said. “It causes me concern,” she said. “The United States has used the forum of the WRC to enable it to bring out new satellite services. The United States by and large is the leader of this, both in the hardware and in the provision of services. So it hurts us more than other countries.” She cited the example of Boeing’s Connexion service, which involves in-air satellite Internet service and has been tested by companies such as British Airways. “For this to take root, it can’t really happen without a change to the international allocation table,” Allison said. “If we can’t do this in 2003, the next conference is in 2007. Wouldn’t it be ridiculous to hold a new service back for that long a period of time? In Internet time, that’s forever.”

Obuchowski said that in the 1990s, conference agendas were dominated by Iridium, Globalstar, Teledesic. In 2000, the focus on harmonized bands for 3G wireless spectrum broke that mold, but that agenda item still overshadowed others, she said. On the growing list of agenda items, Obuchowski said that was a trend that wasn’t likely to be halted altogether. “I think people are going to try to temper it,” she said. “They're going to have to try to temper it because you can’t have an agenda that’s larger than this one and have it be workable.” One trend that has evolved in the last 10 years is the increased reliance at WRCs on regional positions, which started with the cohesive positions adopted by the Conference on European Posts & Telecom, she said. Obuchowski and others said that the Inter-American Telecom Commission (CITEL) increasingly had been harnessing that same regional approach effectively. CITEL completed its regional positions for WRC in Feb., putting it in an advantageous position of giving other regions that hadn’t yet formalized their agenda stances something to react to, she said.

On specific agenda items, Obuchowski said the U.S. had a “superior” technical approach on the 5 GHz proposal because it was making less of a distinction between indoor and outdoor use as an interference mitigation measure. The ability to use such wireless LANs in outdoor environments is of particular importance in developing countries, where a campuswide network could span the space of a village, she said. On the Boeing Connexion item, Obuchowski expressed hope that it wouldn’t be particularly contentious at the conference in Geneva. “Boeing can operate if we make an adjustment to the secondary allocation that already exists,” she said. “Frankly, our biggest fear in the United States is that this is such a positive agenda item that, just like a fast-moving bill on Capitol Hill, this might pick up some ridership,” she said.