 Welcome to the ITU studio in Geneva where I'm very pleased to be joining the studio today by Joanne Wilson who is deputy of the director of the radio communication bureau of the International Telecommunication Union ITU. Joanne, welcome to the studio. Thank you very much. Nice to be here. Now the World Radio Communication Conference is taking place in Shamashake in Egypt from the 28th of October till the 22nd of November 2019. It extends over a period of four weeks. Why does it take so long and how many delegates are expected to attend? Well first we are expecting more than 3,000 delegates and why does it take so long? Actually the question should be how can you do it so fast? In the past conferences have taken us up to three months to achieve so the fact that we're able to do the conference in four weeks is actually a record. One that we've been able to do for the last few conferences but if you go back a number of years technology is what allows us to be able to do the conference in only four weeks. The reason it takes that long is because there are very important decisions that have to be made in terms of it's a technical conference so they have to look at all of the studies that have been done, the proposals that have been made on a large number of agenda items and answer the very important question of can these new systems and services be brought into use added to the already large number of systems and services operating without causing harmful interference into the existing services. That's a critical element of the conference and that's the fundamental reason why it takes a while. And who are these 3,000 or so delegates? They are representatives from administrations. We have 193 member states of the ITU. We usually have more than 160 of those member states present and able to participate in the decision making process. Those delegations, small countries oftentimes only have a few delegates but large companies, countries often have delegations of more than 100 people and they're technical experts on all of those different services and so that's how the delegation at large is so big and the decisions are complicated but they're well debated and well negotiated. Now the World Radio Communication Conference is held every four years or so. Is it expected to play a critical role in contributing to the future growth and development of telecommunications and ICTs? I wanted to ask you what are the key areas that will be addressed by this radio communication conference? Well the most challenging agenda item is one that people refer to as 5G. It's really looking at additional spectrum that can be made available for mobile broadband communications and we're looking now at spectrum that is in the millimeter wave frequencies between 24 and 86 gigahertz. So this is the spectrum that's not currently available for those systems. The currently available systems are spectrum is already in use and for 3G and 4G and will be considered and used by those same companies for 5G services. So this is actually looking at additional spectrum not not changing any of the current frequency allocations or frequency identification. And how quickly are those decisions implemented after the conference? Again it depends on each member state. Some administrations have already started to position identifying spectrum that they will license for those services. Others are still in the process of rolling out their 4G systems and are taking a longer term perspective but that depends on member state by member state. Apart from the spectrum that may be made available for 5G what else is going to be discussed there? Oh my gosh. So we have a number of transport systems or services that will be considered. Intelligent transport systems will spectrum be specifically available for that. Railway to track side communications. Also we have spectrum now used for Wi-Fi systems. They're looking at expanding that. Obviously a lot of the data traffic is over Wi-Fi. It's not over mobile systems. So looking at the amount of spectrum available for that is going to be one of the key issues at the conference. People are looking at the potential new spectrum to be used by high altitude platform stations. It's been in the radio regulations for many years to allow these systems but now we have new technology that can take advantage of it. So those are some of the issues. We also have issues related to satellite systems, non-geostationary orbit systems, looking at the regulatory procedures for bringing them into use. We have issues related to small satellite and short duration missions. How do we regulate them in such a way that the regulatory framework is consistent with the timeframe for bringing those into market? So we have a variety of topics on the agenda of the conference. So what effect will the outcomes of the conference have on end users in the future? So the conference decisions will be manifest in changes to the radio regulations which are then implemented at the national level by the governments. As they become implemented what people will see whether they perceive it or not is further enhancements in their safety in terms of both travel by air and by sea as well as increasing the opportunities for broadband communication either by high altitude platform stations or radio local area networks which people refer to as Wi-Fi or by enhanced mobile broadband communications what people refer to as 5G which the ITU refers to as international mobile telecommunications. We should be clear that the ITU does not identify spectrum for different generations of technology. So the frequencies that are available now for third generation and have been involved to fourth generation what people call 3G or 4G are frequencies that will be available for 5G in addition to additional spectrum that we are considering all of that in the framework of international mobile telecommunications. And 5G is going to be particularly spectrum hungry is that right? Well I don't know. It's supposed to be significantly increasing the efficiency of the use of the spectrum so you should have higher data rates within the existing frequency bands when they deploy 5G in those networks and then in addition they're adding additional frequencies people are talking about the use of these frequencies for interconnecting more things so what people refer to often as the internet of things and I think we'll still have to see how the market evolves. This is to make sure that the market is able to evolve that the spectrum is there so that as you know innovation occurs people are able to make use of that not to be inhibited by the lack of spectrum. So hopefully there'll be enough for everybody. Indeed but at the same time the other important issue is protecting existing services and systems so that we're not causing harmful interference into very vital systems that are used for for instance for weather forecasting and other things that are also essential for human life and safety. Well thank you so much for joining us in the studio we wish you the very best for the whole of the conference I'm sure for some will be an endurance test for others I'm sure they're quite used to the pace and we hopefully will catch up with you again in the very near future in Shamar Sheikh. Thank you very much I look forward to it. Thank you John.