On 22 October, 190 nations will gather in Geneva for the quadrennial World Radiocommunication Conference, which allocates global radio frequency spectrum. Richard Russell, the US ambassador to the conference, describes it as the Spectrum Olympics.
It’s already looking as if shortwave broadcasters will lose the battle with military users over spectrum used for high-frequency communications in the 4 to 10 MHz bands, Russell said. The broadcasters want to use this band to replace their analogue broadcasts DRM services. But the US Navy wants to use the HF bands - underutilized since the demise of Morse code - to support the broadcast of data over new IP-based services at far less cost than sending data by satellite.
Russell said that except for the European Union, countries are heading into the WRC aligned with the US position to not allow an expansion of shortwave broadcasting in the HF band.
(R Netherlands Media Network Weblog)