From: "Alun L. Palmer" on Sun 18 Sep 2005 07:19

" wrote in
From: Alun L. Palmer on Sep 17, 8:07 am


The only point where I differ is that I'm personally convinced that
abolition of the Morse test would have been carried in the ITU in 1993 if
it could only have got to the floor. Those who delayed it did so precisely
because they knew that.

That's a typical tactic, found at any large conclave/conference.

The ITU is one country one vote, so the US is no
more influential there than Monaco or Luxembourg.

Only when it comes to the VOTE ITSELF. It's fairly obvious that
the larger-population countries have larger delegates (and the
'guests' who are not supposed to have any voting power). With
more people in a delegation, the more people there are to meet
with other delegations away from the assembly and do one-on-one
salesmanship for "their side."

Then you have the many months prior to a WRC where the delegates
have been largely identified on the ITU listings (plus their
hotels/lodgings per delegation identified) so that "salesmanship"
can be applied.

The major "salesmanship" effort is on OTHER radio matters, of
course, and - contrary to specific-interest-on-ham-radio groups -
is of a greater international importance in radio regulations.

The IARU as a collective body is larger than the ARRL and their
opinion-influence on the voting delegates is stronger than the
ARRL's influence. When the IARU came out against amateur radio
licensing code testing a year prior to WRC-03, that sent a
"message" (in effect) to other administrations' delegates, a
"set-up" for the future voting. The IARU had not yet been of a
consensus on S25 modernization the decade before WRC-03.

One problem of American radio amateurs is that they do NOT, as
a general rule, look any further than American ham radio
magazines for "news." While the ITU has a number of easily-
downloadable files on regulatory information, most of it is
available only to "members" on a subscription basis (members
would be "recognized" administration delegations or delegates).
They don't much bother with the FCC freely-available information
even though the FCC is their government's radio regulatory
agency. News that does get down to the individual-licensee
level is thus rather "filtered" by intermediate parties. That
makes it very easy for them to NOT spend time looking for news
elsewhere and they get to play with their radios longer. :-)
It's also a ripe area for any group to do influence-control on
many without them realizing what is happening.