Conference wraps up elections having elected members to the Radio Regulations Board and Member States to serve on the ITU Council for the next four years

On 11 October 2010, the Guadalajara Conference elected members of the Radio Regulations Board (RRB), an important body in ITU, as well as Member States to serve on the Council for the next four years. These elections conclude one of the key agenda items of the Guadalajara Conference.

The 12-member Radio Regulations Board

The Radio Regulations Board is a part-time body comprising twelve members (see table below for election results). To achieve geographical balance, Board members are elected from ITU’S five Administrative Regions. Two members are elected from each of regions A, B and C. And three members are elected from each of regions D and E as follows:

• Region A: Americas (2 members).

• Region B: Western Europe (2 members).

• Region C: Eastern Europe and Northern Asia (2 members).

• Region D: Africa (3 members).

• Region E: Asia and Australasia (3 members).

Voting process
Each delegation having the right to vote receives a ballot paper bearing the names of the candidates (with the names of the countries that are presenting those candidates for membership), grouped by region.

Each delegation indicates on its ballot paper the names of the candidates it supports by putting crosses against a maximum of two candidates per region for regions A, B and C, and against a maximum of three candidates per region for regions D and E.

The candidates (two each for regions A, B and C, and three each for regions D and E) receiving the largest number of votes are elected members of the Board.

Duties of the Board
One of the Board’s main functions is to approve rules of procedures to facilitate application of the Radio Regulations, the international treaty governing the use of the radio-frequency spectrum and the geostationary-satellite and non-geostationary-satellite orbits. The Board also:

• considers disagreements between administrations, or between recognized operators, concerning contravention or non-observance of the Radio Regulations (but only if an administration submits the case to the Board);
  
  
• considers any appeal against a decision by the Radiocommunication Bureau (BR) or any other request submitted by an administration;
  
  
• considers cases of harmful interference (but only if requested to do so by an administration), where the parties concerned cannot solve the problem themselves and BR's intervention has not achieved results.

The Board carries out its duties with the help and expertise provided by the staff of the Radiocommunication Bureau, whose Director serves as the Board’s Executive Secretary.

A bit of history
The Radio Regulations Board goes back many years. It started off as the International Frequency Registration Board (IFRB), which was created by the Atlantic City Plenipotentiary Conference in 1947 recognizing the importance of having international order in the usage of the radio-frequency spectrum. IFRB was established to manage the radio-frequency spectrum internationally and to solve related problems in a neutral manner. The Atlantic City Conference also placed IFRB at the highest level in the structure of ITU. It stressed that the eleven members of IFRB must be considered as “custodians of an international public trust” and not as representatives of their respective Member States or regions.

Over the years, IFRB proved to be indispensable, confirming the wisdom of the decisions of the Atlantic City Conference. The Board served the ITU membership well and impartially, helping to ensure that the Radio Regulations were interpreted coherently and that they were strictly observed.

Then in 1965, the Montreux Plenipotentiary Conference decided to reduce the Board’s size to five. Some argue that the Montreux Conference might even have abolished IFRB completely. However, developing countries supported IFRB, seeing it as a neutral body that could assist them and protect their interests vis-à-vis those of the developed countries.

Following a decision of the Plenipotentiary Conference in Nice, France, in 1989, a High-Level Committee was set up to Review the Structure and Functioning of ITU. This committee proposed separating the international, high-level regulatory activities of the IFRB from the administrative internal management duties within its secretariat. It also recommended integrating ITU’s regulatory activities in the field of radiocommunications with the Union’s work on the technical and operational aspects of radiocommunications. At that time, these aspects were dealt with by the International Radio Consultative Committee (CCIR) with its own specialized secretariat headed by an elected Director.

On the basis of these proposals of the High-Level Committee, the Additional Plenipotentiary Conference, held in Geneva in December 1992, took the fundamental decision to replace the IFRB by a part-time Radio Regulations Board (RRB). The Committee’s proposals also led to the creation of the Radiocommunication Bureau (BR), as we know it today, by merging the former IFRB and CCIR specialized secretariats. Then in 1994, the Kyoto Plenipotentiary Conference elected a nine-member part-time Board. Four years later, the Plenipotentiary Conference in Minneapolis in 1998 decided to increase the number of Board members from nine to twelve.

Forty-eight Member States elected to the Council

On 11 October 2010, the conference elected 48 Member States to serve on the ITU Council for a four-year period (see table below). Before this conference, there were 46 seats on the Council. As reported in Issue No. 2 of the Highlights the conference decided to allocate the 47th seat to the Americas (Region A) and the 48th seat to Asia and Australasia (Region E).

Each of the five administrative regions is entitled to a designated number of seats as follows:

• Americas (Region A) formerly had 8 seats, which have been increased to 9 at this conference.

• Western Europe (Region B) has 8 seats.

• Eastern Europe and Northern Asia (Region C) has 5 seats.

• Africa (Region D) has 13 seats.

• Asia and Australasia (Region E) formerly had 12 seats, which have been increased to 13 at this conference.