Hams gain new LF band

From Amateur Radio Newsline:

Some good news and one big loss for ham radio at the now concluded World Radiocommunications Conference in Geneva, Switzerland. Jeramy Boot, G4NJH, of the GB2RS News Service has the details:

"The big news for amateur radio is that a worldwide secondary allocation of 135.7-137.8kHz has been approved. This marks the first time since allocations to radio services began that the amateur service has had an allocation below the medium wave broadcasting band. The effective date is not yet set and in any case amateurs must wait until their own administrations authorize the new allocation before they can use it. Some administrations, while not wishing to block the international allocation, have indicated a reluctance to implement it in their countries because of various interference concerns. The band is already available in the UK and several other European countries and this paves the way for many more countries to become active on Low Frequency. At the time of writing, hopes of a possible amateur secondary allocation near 5MHz had faded. This,as a result of the failure to find a compromise on the main 4 to 10MHz issue. I'M Jeramy Boot, G4NJH, and you are listening to the Amateur Radio Newsline."

Future World Radiocommunications Conferences are tentatively scheduled for 2011 and 2015. One tentative agenda item for 2011 is a secondary allocation of about 15 kHz around 500kHz. Not on the schedule is any more talk about a new 5 MHz ham radio band. (GB2RS)