Summary

  • African administrations want ITU Resolution 186 to recognise large non-geostationary satellite constellations as a risk to equitable access to spectrum and satellite-orbit resources, especially for developing countries.
  • Their draft also deletes a 2022 instruction linking requests for satellite-monitoring-facility information to harmful-interference cases and Council-reviewed cooperation agreements. A shorter request-based instruction takes its place; the Council agreement route remains elsewhere in the resolution.

The sky is getting crowded; the instruction manual is getting thinner. In Addendum 34 to its ITU conference proposals, the African group writes a sharp new warning into Resolution 186: large non-geostationary satellite constellations pose a direct risk to equitable access to spectrum and orbital resources, particularly for developing countries. Then the draft trims the clause that tells the ITU Radiocommunication Bureau how to help administrations find satellite-monitoring information when harmful interference occurs.

The 2022 resolution had two adjacent instructions. One told the Bureau to promote access, upon request, to information on monitoring facilities for harmful-interference cases under Article 15 of the Radio Regulations, through cooperation agreements considered by the ITU Council and within budget limits. The next told it to make facility information available to administrations. The African amendment deletes the first and recasts the second as a single instruction to provide facility information upon request. Its separate invitation for the Council to review cooperation agreements survives, as does the invitation for members to join such arrangements. The bridge between the request, an interference case and an agreement is less explicit in the Bureau’s own marching orders.

That is a curious choice because the proposal’s Reasons paragraph calls for strategic partnerships that would let emerging spacefaring regions in Africa and the Pacific use monitoring infrastructure around the world. A list of facilities and a working route into them are different things. If an administration reports interference, it needs to know who can measure it, how an agreement grants access and whether the evidence reaches the coordination process. The new text also asks the Bureau to report emerging challenges to the next plenipotentiary conference. A report could make the gap visible; it cannot by itself open a monitoring station.

The ITU register dates the addendum to 25 October. Delegates in November will decide what survives. The useful test is concrete: a published access procedure, a usable agreement and a recorded path from interference report to measurement.

Official sources