International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) President Tim Ellam, VE6SH/G4HUA, has called upon IARU member societies to seek the support of their respective governments for an Amateur Radio secondary allocation at 5.275-5.450 MHz, per Agenda Item 1.4 at World Radiocommunication Conference 2015 (WRC-15). Ellam told his colleagues in a letter this week that obtaining the allocation is “one of the main goals at WRC-15 for the Amateur Radio Service.” WRC-15 will take place November 2-27 in Geneva, Switzerland.

“The IARU officers and the Administrative Council have discussed this issue and feel it is very important that we have our IARU member-societies engaged in seeking support for Agenda Item 1.4 from their respective administrations,” Ellam wrote. “In order to achieve success for [Agenda Item] 1.4, which will be a very difficult task for the IARU team at WRC-15, we will need as much support from administrations as possible.”

Agenda Item 1.4 stemmed from Resolution 649 at World Radiocommunication Conference 2012, which invited WRC-15 to consider, based on International Telecommunication Union (ITU) studies, “the possibility of making an allocation of spectrum, not necessarily contiguous, to the Amateur Service on a secondary basis within the band 5.250 to 5.450 MHz.” As the WRC-12 resolution noted, more than 50 administrations have allowed various uses of frequencies in this band to carry out propagation studies, permit communication during emergencies and disasters, and verify that Amateur Radio can share spectrum with incumbent services. The IARU is seeking consideration for a secondary Amateur Service allocation at 5.275 to 5.450 MHz.

“An allocation at 5 MHz will bridge the propagation gap between the 3500 kHz and 7000 kHz Amateur Radio bands and enable the Amateur Service to maintain stable communication over various distances for the whole 24 hours, especially for use when providing communications in disaster situations and during relief operations,” the IARU has stressed.

To date, Amateur Radio allocations in this part of the HF spectrum have been largely in the form of discrete channels, such as the five channels available to US radio amateurs.