Requirements and declarations Ken Hunt EBU Technical department

Overview It is well known that in some parts of the planning area there are too many requirements to be satisfied It is also well known that administrative declarations can be used to overcome some deficiencies of the computing process: to account for the presence of mountains to account for future use of directional transmitting antennas other effects...

Overview It may not be obvious that a combination of excess requirements and abusive (internal) declarations can have a disastrous impact on the planning process It is the declarations which are internal to any one administration which have the highest potential for abuse A separate presentation goes into the detail of this This presentation deals with some specific examples and some possible improvements

Example 1 Some of the abuse of the concept of declarations seems to be accidental An example is where an administration submits several requirements for a given area, some with a single channel and others with 'UHF' (or 'VHF') The same administration then declares that most, or all, of the multi channel requirements are compatible

Example 1 They could all then be assigned the same channel, possibly even for the same area While this would 'satisfy' many of the requirements, it would not lead to a situation which could be implemented It is unlikely to be what the administration intended but is a direct result of what it has said that it wants

Example 2 Another example is where an administration has submitted several requirements for the same area with the same single channel These are clearly incompatible but the administration has declared them compatible It is likely that the synthesis process will find that it can assign the same channel to more than one requirement for the same area It is unlikely that this is what the administration wanted (but it is possible)

Example 3 In some cases an administration has submitted many tens of requirements, sometimes over 100, for the same area Without declarations there are clearly too many to be satisfied With declarations many of the requirements may be 'satisfied' but most of them could never be implemented

Example 4 In some other cases it is difficult to believe that a mistake has been made and it seems more likely that there has been a deliberate attempt to distort the planning process and gain an advantage over neighbouring countries For example there are sometimes several overlapping allotments/assignments on the same channel These are clearly incompatible but have been declared compatible

Example 4 The synthesis process will count these requirements individually and may then give an advantage to the concerned administration It will be argued that there are always mountains between the requirements

Example 4 The synthesis process will count these requirements individually and may then give an advantage to the concerned administration It will be argued that there are always mountains between the requirements In some parts of the planning area there seem to be more mountains than people!

Conditional declarations A new concept is that of conditional declarations and they may be too new for abuse of them to have been developed

Conditional declarations A new concept is that of conditional declarations and they may be too new for abuse of them to have been developed YET

Conditional declarations A new concept is that of conditional declarations and they may be too new for abuse of them to have been developed YET It is quite easy to foresee some abuse This could be where the conditions are not sufficiently precise and it subsequently is found to be impossible to meet them and a requirement can then not be implemented

Possible improvements Action by administrations: Every effort should be made to ensure that the conditions applied to 'conditional declarations' : are stated explicitly and without ambiguity are not subject to subsequent increased difficulty (such as increased protection ratios) Action within the planning approach : None discussed

Excess requirements Action by administrations: Every effort should be made to reduce the number of requirements in any area where there is an excess

Excess requirements Action by administrations: Every effort should be made to reduce the number of requirements in any area where there is an excess Additional effort should be made to reduce the number of requirements in any area where there is an excess However, there are currently increases

Excess requirements Action within the planning approach: Difficult to see what could be done in the absence of any identification of what are the priorities of a given administration Can administrations apply moral pressure to their neighbours?

Declaration abuse Action by administrations: Apply moral pressure to neighbours

Declaration abuse Action by administrations: Apply moral pressure to neighbours Apply more moral pressure to neighbours!

Declaration abuse Action within the planning approach: An extension to the compatibility analysis and synthesis could be considered in order to reduce the imbalance that they currently introduce This could involve splitting the synthesis into two phases

Declaration abuse In the first phase internal declarations would be either: ignored completely, or used to produce 'super linked' sets of requirements which would be treated as single requirements by the synthesis In the second phase any requirements which were assigned a channel in the first phase would retain a channel and all declarations (internal and external) would be taken into account

Declaration abuse The overall impact would be to achieve a better balance between administrations which had made abusive declarations and those which had not In those parts of the planning area where there had been no abusive declarations there should be little or no effect