RAW COPY INTERNATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS UNION 1ST INTER-REGIONAL WORKSHOP ON WRC-19 PREPARATION GENEVA, SWITZERLAND 21 NOVEMBER 2017 9:00 A.M. Services Provided By: Caption First, Inc. P.O. Box 3066 Monument, CO 80132 1 877 825 5234 +001 719 481 9835 www.captionfirst.com *** This text is being provided in a rough draft Format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) or captioning are provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> PHILIPPE AUBINEAU: Hello. Ladies and gentlemen, can you please take your seats. Ladies and gentlemen, could you please take your seats. We will start shortly. Ladies and gentlemen, could you please take your seats. We will start in two minutes. So ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank you very much for coming to this 1st Interregional Workshop on WRC-19 Preparation and I would like to invite to join us on the podium, the director of Radiocommunication Bureau, the chairman of the CPM, and also the chairman of the regional groups, six regional groups, ASMG, the APT, the ATU, the CEPT, the CITEL, and the RCC, so we can start this workshop efficiently. So once again, thank you very much for coming to this first ITU interregional workshop on WRC-19 preparation, and we have our delegates on the podium with us this morning and I would like to start by giving the floor to the director of the Radiocommunication Bureau, who will make some addresses to you. So Mr. Director, please. >> FRANCOIS RANCY: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure to welcome you to this first workshop, Interregional workshop on WRC-19 preparation this week. On behalf of the Secretariat general of the ITU. The successful results achieved with the radio conferences, with their busy agendas and difficult issues to resolve, have shown how important are all the opportunities to meet formally and informally, exchange views, provide explanations and ideas for a better preparation of the next Conference. The present Workshop is one of these opportunities and I am pleased to see some many of you here present today and being ready to contribute to The success of WRC-19. As you know, the Agenda for WRC-19 is not less complex Than previous conferences. In order to achieve the same level of achievement at this conference, we need to continue the trend towards increasing the proportion of common proposals to the conference, and therefore reducing the possible divergence between all proposals. The proposals reached two-thirds at the last conference and we need to work further to bring the proposals closer to each other. I believe that this workshop is one opportunity to go in this direction. This process of going to more regional preparation or increase the regional preparation and the interregional coordination highlights the great spirit of international cooperation that marks the ITU tradition of consensus building. It has proved to be a powerful and increasingly successful mechanism to reach agreement within and between the various regional group, as foreseen and encouraged by resolution 72 of WRC-07. I am pleased to see that all regional groups are well represented today at this Group. I am convinced that the internal reflections and discussions that have already started within each regional group, as well as their long experience in their internal organization and preparation for WRCs, will benefit all of us during this Workshop. I am also pleased to welcome about sister organizations and many international organizations. I think their presence here is also will help better our understanding of the spectrum requirements of the various stakeholders in spectrum. Your participation to this workshop emphasizes the increasing importance of the WRC process: To maintain regulatory certainty for a multi-trillion dollar industry which plays a increasingly important role in the development of our societies. And also to achieve the economies of scale, which enable more affordable use of radio communication services. In so doing, it is Essential and the WRC, it is essential To establish the technical conditions for the free-interference operation of all the services and To provide access to frequency spectrum and orbit resources for new technologies, while protecting existing services and applications. WRC-19 has many complex issues on its Agenda and I am very much encouraged by the good progress made already within the ITU-R Study Groups and responsible Working Parties and Task Group.For its preparation of. I am very confident that under the very competent leadership of their Chairmen, all groups will be able to provide the expected draft CPM texts by the end of August Next year which is only ten months ahead of us -- or nine months, rather. This is, I think an essential landmark for the preparation of WRC-19's success. During this Workshop today and tomorrow, we will discuss, in particular, the most challenging item on WRC-19 Agenda, which is the agenda item 113, IMT spectrum magnification, in the frequency bands above 24 gigahertz, Which, for some of them, are also be considered for HAPS and for non-GSO FSS systems. The very active development of IMT 2020 (5G) is putting currently a lot of pressure on manufacturers and operators to start technology developments and network deployments ahead of WRC-19 decisions.The ITU must be responsive to this situation in order to preserve Global harmonization of spectrum which is so essential to produce the economies of scale that will benefit all countries and all citizens for the rapid deployment of broadband. I am convinced that the best response is to continue, as you have been doing in the last couple of months, to seek an early consensus on some of the candidate bands if possible prior to or at the second session of CPM-19. The Radiocommunication Bureau will of course continue to provide the necessary Support to all of your efforts and in particular, taking into account a number of requests I received recently. We are planning to provide the first direction of the director's report in the first part of 2018. This, I hope, will facilitate the identification of possible solutions to the issues that will be raised in this report. The BR will also continue its effort to support the work of the regional groups, and of the IMT-ITU-R member for WRC preparation. I would like to thank all of those who have helped in this process, to ease their understanding and to be better prepared for the conference. Based on the experience, we plan more similar workshops this year and 2019, before WRC-19. Before I conclude, I would like to call your attention of the network of women for WRC-19 initiative, which intends to build women's leadership for the upcoming conference. This network was launched last December, during the World Radio communication seminar, Subsequent sessions were organized in the context of ITU-R meetings. Further sessions will be organized within main ITU-R events from now to WRC-19. I also would like to invite all of you to the celebration of the 90th Anniversary of the CCIR/ITU-R Study Groups, since your presence here highlights That you are key players in these Study Groups and the preparation of WRC, contributing in this remarkable process that will complete its 90 years this year. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Chairman, please be assured that ITU staff will assist you in every possible way to make this workshop successful one, and I wish you my very best wishes for these two days ahead of us. Thank you very much for your attention. (Applause). >> PHLIPPE AUBINEAU: Thank you very much, Mr. Francois Rancy, director of the Radiocommunication Bureau. And I would like to invite the CPM chairman, Mr. Khalid Al-Awadi, if you could say a few words. >> KHALID AL-AWADI: Thank you very much, Philippe. Thank you Mr. Rancy, dear colleagues, the chairmen of the regional groups, ladies and gentlemen participating as delegates of Member States and representatives of regional and international organizations, and stakeholders and the three. I would like to welcome all of you to this first interregional workshop for WRC-19 preparations. I would also like to at the beginning thank the ITU and all the staff for the preparations that has been made in order to prepare for this workshop and provide us with this opportunity together and discuss the most important WRC-19 agenda items. At the beginning of the cycle, we distribute all agenda items on different responsible groups during CPM-1. From that time, we start exchanging information and start communicating between the different groups, between the concerned or the responsible groups and the other Working Parties in the ITU with regards to the agenda items of WRC-19. What we are doing here is basically a continuation of this communication, because we believe that communicating and exchanging information and sharing knowledge is an essential part of achieving the best results and achieving compromises with regards to the WRC-19 agenda items. Because also we do believe that working in silos will not take us anywhere and will not achieve any required or good results for these agenda items. Ladies and gentlemen, during these two days, we are going to have different sessions to discuss different agenda items, with participation of representatives of regional groups and participation of chairmen of the responsible groups for the agenda items. Basically, although we are midway until the conference, people might think it's too early to find -- or to have proper positions on the agenda items, but we think that it's essential, it's elementary to have at least understanding of basic initial positions of the regional groups with regards to these agenda items.