9th Global Shortwave Coordination Conference
33 9th Global Shortwave Coordination Conference
Reported by Oldrich Cip HFCC
The 9th Global Shortwave Coordination Conference was held from January 28th to February 1st 2013 in Tunis, Tunisia. The Conference was held just prior to World Radio Day, celebrated on February 13th, and international radio broadcasting had been placed on its agenda by UNESCO. The global community comprising shortwave frequency coordinators from the HFCC, ASBU and ABU-HFC regional groups were invited to contribute to the Radio Day project. Almost 100 frequency managers, representing 52 broadcasters, transmission providers and organisations from different countries, active in international radio, attended the conference. The joint global conference dealt again with the reduction of interference affecting frequency channels used for nearly 5000 daily shortwave radio transmissions put out by broadcasters.
The regional co-ordination groups had taken up the partnership in World Radio Day in an effort to show that synergy rather than competition is needed between the new distribution platforms and traditional shortwave transmissions. Contributions to the UNESCO’s World Radio Day websites also tried to show that multi-platform content distribution is even more evident in international broadcasting and that the presence of broadcasters across all distribution technologies makes radio the most effective platform.
It has become obvious that debate on the future distribution of media content and on the use of new – mainly digital – technologies is very much needed and that a global conference is a suitable forum for such debate.
One of the highlights related to the World Radio Day project that was high on the agenda of the Tunis Conference was the setting up of a public World Wide Shortwave Schedule employing an online database of all regional co-ordination groups that is being constantly updated and which can be accessed here:
http://www.hfcc.org/schedule/.
It has been agreed to devote all possible publicity to the World Wide Schedule, which is capable of providing fresh schedule information to listeners. However, major concerns have
been expressed over the presence of inactive transmissions, inaccurate entries and mis-formatted language information. Such data submitted to the HFCC database by some frequency management organisations have an extremely negative impact and could make the global schedule, accessible from the UNESCO website, completely useless to the public.
A meeting of regional co-ordination groups with the ITU representative agreed that there would be a link from the Broadcasting Services part of the ITU website to the World Wide Shortwave Schedule on the HFCC website.
The Tunis Conference acknowledged with satisfaction that the UN-lead agency has devoted attention to the humanitarian aspects of international radio in disaster relief and mitigation. A special project called International Radio for Disaster Relief (IRDR) – a comprehensive system previously missing in the world community, is being developed by the HFCC in co-operation with members in the Arab states and Asia- Pacific broadcasting unions.
It was reported that the ITU Working Party 6A (WP6A) had received a liaison statement about the establishment of a Focus Group on Disaster Relief Systems and Network Resilience and Recovery. As this Focus Group appeared not to have taken into account the role of international short wave broadcasting, WP6A decided that it would inform the Focus Group about the International Radio for Disaster Relief project. A relevant document was then sent to the Focus Group. This matter is also on the agenda of the Group of Experts. Input for the WP6A will be also prepared as Recommendation ITU-R P.842 “Computation of reliability and compatibility of HF radio systems”.
The Steering Board of the HFCC/ASBU association has expressed appreciation that more ABU-HFC representatives have shown interest in becoming members of the HFCC. This could make up for some HFCC members who were lost, especially in Europe, after the switch-off of their shortwave services and would ensure the smoother running of the global co-ordination process.
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