The 17th meeting of the Maritime Forum Group of the Frequency Management working group (WG FM) was held on 22-24 September at the Helsinki offices of the Finnish Communication Regulatory Authority (FICORA), chaired by Jaap Steenge of the Netherlands.
The Maritime Forum Group’s activity mainly covers issues concerning maritime mobile service and maritime radio-navigation and is reported to WG FM.
Various issues were considered at this meeting, of which the following stand out:
- accompaniment of the proposed revision of ERC DEC(99)01 on harmonisation of material for general operator’s certificate (GOC) and restricted operator’s certificate (ROC) exams;
- development of new ECC recommendation on frequency usage for personal radio equipment, including automatic identification system for search and rescue transmitter (AIS-SART), man overboard (MOB) devices, automatic identification system for man overboard situations (AIS-MOB), automatic identification systems for emergency position-indicating radio beacons (EPIRB-AIS), portable very high frequency (VHF) radios with digital selective calling (DSC) and global navigation satellite system (GNSS);
- issues in the scope of task group 26 (TG26) of the European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI), specifically draft standard EN303 132-1 (standard for MOB device using DSC signalling) and monitoring of compliance with standard ETSI EN 300 373, which imposes a power output limit of 400 Watts for maritime mobile radios transmitting in single side band (SSB) and operating below 4 MHz - that limit is not consensual and its application is being studied;
- issues in the scope of working party 5B (WP 5B) of the International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R), concerning MOB and AIS systems, Recommendation ITU-R M.493 on digital selective calling system for use in maritime mobile service and revision of Recommendation ITU-R M. 541-9 on operational procedures for use of equipment with digital selective calling system in maritime mobile service;
- in the scope of ITU-R, monitoring of new functions of the website and the database of the maritime mobile access and retrieval system (MARS) of the ITU;
- accompaniment of matters associated to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), specifically results of the Maritime Safety Committee (MSC) meeting and preparation of the 11th meeting of the Joint IMO/ITU Experts Group for maritime radiocommunication issues, to be held in October 2015 in London.
