Summary

  • Europe’s proposed new ITU satellite resolution would put spectrum, orbit and frequency-coordination rules exclusively in ITU-R and the World Radiocommunication Conference process.
  • A companion proposal would suppress the 2022 Space2030 Resolution 218 while carrying its reporting and capacity-building duties into the new text.

When a country wants to operate a satellite network, someone must coordinate its frequencies. When three ITU sectors discuss the same network, someone must decide who writes the rules. The European members of CEPT have put two linked proposals before the ITU’s 2026 Plenipotentiary Conference to settle that second question. Addendum 43 proposes a new resolution on satellite systems and the Space2030 Agenda. Its first operative clause reserves development and revision of satellite spectrum, orbit and coordination rules to the ITU Radiocommunication Sector, the World Radiocommunication Conference and the Radio Regulations.

That clause has teeth inside the ITU. The draft gives ITU-R the lead technical and regulatory role. Standardization and development bureaux would contribute through their own work, including network convergence and capacity building, while staying complementary to ITU-R on satellite radiocommunication rules. A terrestrial network that begins handing traffic to a satellite creates work for all three sectors; it does not create three competing spectrum rulebooks.

Europe also submitted addendum 48, asking the conference to suppress Resolution 218, adopted in 2022. The explanation is unusually candid: keeping the old, narrower Space2030 text beside the broader satellite resolution would leave overlapping instructions. The new draft carries forward an annual report to the ITU Council, help for developing countries navigating orbital and spectrum procedures, cooperation with the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, and reporting on UN-Space meetings. The filing is a proposed replacement of institutional instructions.

The UN’s 2021 Space2030 Agenda supplies the wider development goal. The European text places the ITU’s particular tool—access to radio frequencies and associated orbits—inside that agenda. It cites the ITU Constitution’s Article 44, under which those resources are limited and countries should have equitable access, with developing countries’ needs in view. The conference will decide whether to adopt this pairing at PP-26.

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