In amateur radio, who has the authority?

 This morning, I received an e-mail from a reader. He wrote:

Who sets the band plans within a country ?  USA? How much authority does the IARU have on individual countries? On the USA?

I replied:

Well, there are band plans and then there are band plans. Here in the U.S., the FCC sets regulations that say where certain modes can be used within a certain frequency band. Those carry the force of law. For example, on the 40m band, Extra Class operators cannot operate SSB below 7.125 MHz. If  you operate SSB on 7.120 MHz, you can be cited for doing so.

The ARRL and the IARU take that a step further by recommending that certain modes be restricted to certain sub-bands. For example, the FCC allows CW and digital mode operation to all operators in the 7.025 – 7.125 MHz band. The ARRL, however, suggests that digital operators restrict their operations to 7.080-7.125 MHz.

I use the word “suggest” because the ARRL and the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) have no real legal authority. The IARU is just a group of representatives from national amateur radio societies like the ARRL.

Internationally, it’s the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) that has the power. They are an organization of the United Nations, and by international treaty are responsible for things like frequency allocations and licensing requirements. They hold conferences every three or four years. According to their website, “World radiocommunication conferences (WRC) are held every three to four years. It is the job of WRC to review, and, if necessary, revise the Radio Regulations, the international treaty governing the use of the radio-frequency spectrum and the geostationary-satellite and non-geostationary-satellite orbits.”. The latest WRC was just held this year.

The IARU sends a non-voting representative to the WRCs, but they are there only in an advisory/advocacy role. Fortunately for amateur radio, many of the official delegates to the WRC are also amateur radio operators.

As an aside, the WARC bands–30m, 17m, and 12m–are so called because those bands were allocated to the Amateur Radio Service at the conference in 1979. At the time this conference was called the World Administrative Radio Conference or WARC.