Description

For 50 years, radio technologies and services have played an important role in the daily lives of people all over the world. Radio waves carried messages of hope to millions of people caught behind the Iron Curtain. They allowed Americans to see and hear Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the Moon. In more recent years, satellite communications have allowed us to witness events from around the globe as they happened—the fall of the Berlin Wall and a lone Chinese student facing an advancing tank in Tiananmen Square. Radio waves also make possible services and technologies considered commonplace today—radio and television programs, cellular telephones, and even microwave ovens, remote garage-door openers, and baby monitors, Advances in radio technology are giving birth to a wide range of new products and services, including pocket-sized telephones that may allow people to make and receive calls anywhere in the world, high-definition television (HDTV) that will provide superior quality pictures and sound, and digital radios that will provide static-free listening.

The process of coordinating the radio frequencies used by different wireless services and systems, and harmonizing radiocommunication policies worldwide is an extremely complex task. Procedures must be developed that allow radio services to share sections of the radio frequency spectrum, and international agreements must be negotiated so that systems and equipment in different countries can interconnect and not interfere with each other. The job of harmonizing and regulating telecommunication and radio services on a worldwide basis falls to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a specialized agency of the United Nations.