{
  "slug": "itu-editions-pages-lag-the-circulars",
  "title": "ITU-R approved three Recommendations on 8 September. Its own editions pages still show the old ones.",
  "date": "2026-09-21",
  "summary": "The ITU decides by correspondence and announces it in an administrative circular, weeks before the page you would check catches up. Sitting in that gap right now are a revision that adds a band for beam wireless power and drops the paragraph telling administrations to consider exposure limits, and a clutter-loss revision that would cover 5.8 GHz Earth-space paths for the first time.",
  "author": "Ido Yahalomi",
  "tags": [
    "standards",
    "itu",
    "spectrum",
    "ground-segment"
  ],
  "provenance": "documented",
  "words": 1678,
  "headings": [
    {
      "id": "what-was-approved-and-what-the-pages-say",
      "level": 2,
      "text": "What was approved, and what the pages say"
    },
    {
      "id": "a-revision-that-adds-a-band-and-drops-a-paragraph",
      "level": 2,
      "text": "A revision that adds a band, and drops a paragraph"
    },
    {
      "id": "the-clutter-model-that-is-about-to-reach-5-8-ghz",
      "level": 2,
      "text": "The clutter model that is about to reach 5.8 GHz"
    },
    {
      "id": "how-to-read-the-stream",
      "level": 2,
      "text": "How to read the stream"
    },
    {
      "id": "what-would-change-my-mind",
      "level": 2,
      "text": "What would change my mind"
    },
    {
      "id": "sources",
      "level": 2,
      "text": "Sources"
    }
  ],
  "html": "<p>On 8 September 2026 the ITU Radiocommunication Sector approved revised editions of three</p>\n<p>propagation Recommendations. Eleven days later, on 19 September, the ITU pages that tell you</p>\n<p>which edition is in force list none of them. That is not a website defect. It is where a</p>\n<p>standards register quietly goes stale, and two revisions worth reading are sitting in the same</p>\n<p>gap today.</p>\n<h2 id=\"what-was-approved-and-what-the-pages-say\">What was approved, and what the pages say</h2>\n<p>Administrative Circular CACE/1206, dated 16 September 2026, is one page and an annex. It</p>\n<p>records that three draft revised Recommendations were put through simultaneous adoption and</p>\n<p>approval by correspondence under Circular CACE/1198 of 8 July 2026, and states, in the</p>\n<p>circular&apos;s own words, &quot;The conditions governing this procedure were met on 8 September 2026.&quot;</p>\n<p>The annex gives the numbers and titles: P.372-18, radio noise; P.2041-1, path attenuation on</p>\n<p>links between an airborne terminal and space; and P.311-20, the acquisition and presentation of</p>\n<p>propagation data.</p>\n<p>Now check the pages that a citation would point at. On 19 September 2026, the editions list for</p>\n<p>P.372 gives P.372-17 (08/2024) as In force (Main) and shows no -18 at any status. P.311 gives</p>\n<p>P.311-19 (11/2025). P.2041 gives P.2041-0 (09/2013), still under the older title, which says</p>\n<p>airborne platform where the approved revision says airborne terminal. Three for three, eleven</p>\n<p>days after approval.</p>\n<p>The two ITU surfaces also disagree about their own dates. The circular index lists CACE/1206 as</p>\n<p>2026-09-10. The circular&apos;s own first page is dated 16 September 2026. Where they differ, the</p>\n<p>document is the record and the index is a listing.</p>\n<p>None of this is misconduct, and the mechanism is not hidden. A Recommendation is approved first</p>\n<p>and published after, and the editions page is a publications page. But the page does not say</p>\n<p>that about itself. It says In force, which is a legal claim, on a date that is a publishing</p>\n<p>fact. Anyone who builds a register by reading those pages, and that includes the standards</p>\n<p>register BeamDesk publishes, which cites exactly those URLs, is reading a lagging indicator and</p>\n<p>labelling it as current.</p>\n<p>The leading indicator is free, public and needs no login: the administrative circular stream at</p>\n<p><code>itu.int/md/R00-CACE-CIR-NNNN/en</code>, with the PDF one path below it. Each circular names the</p>\n<p>Recommendations in an annex. As of today the index tops out at CACE/1206, so nothing has been</p>\n<p>approved since 8 September that this route would show.</p>\n<h2 id=\"a-revision-that-adds-a-band-and-drops-a-paragraph\">A revision that adds a band, and drops a paragraph</h2>\n<p>Administrative Circular CACE/1203, dated 26 August 2026, covers Study Group 1 and is a step</p>\n<p>earlier in the same procedure: two draft revisions adopted by the Study Group and sent to Member</p>\n<p>States, who are asked to reply by 26 October 2026. One of the two is a draft revision of</p>\n<p>Recommendation ITU-R SM.2151-0.</p>\n<p>SM.2151 matters to anyone in power beaming because it is the only ITU-R Recommendation that</p>\n<p>names frequency ranges for beam wireless power transmission. The 2022 text scopes itself to</p>\n<p>wireless charging of mobile and portable devices and to powering sensor networks, explicitly not</p>\n<p>electric vehicles, and its Table 1 lists four ranges: 915-921 MHz, 2 410-2 483.5/2 486 MHz,</p>\n<p>5 725-5 875 MHz and 61-61.5 GHz. Its recognizing a) says plainly &quot;that WPT has no status in the</p>\n<p>RR&quot;.</p>\n<p>The annex to CACE/1203 summarises what the revision does. Two items stand out. The first is an</p>\n<p>addition: &quot;added a new frequency range, 24.1-24.15 GHz, to Table 1 based on the completion of</p>\n<p>impact studies in Report ITU-R SM.2505&quot;, with a new note beneath the table. That is a fifth band</p>\n<p>named for beam WPT, and the study that justified it is the same Report whose 2026 revision added</p>\n<p>a United States study at 24.1-24.15 GHz.</p>\n<p>The second is a subtraction. The same annex records that the revision &quot;removed ICNIRP and WHO</p>\n<p>from the Abbreviations and Glossary section&quot;, because those acronyms were deleted from</p>\n<p>considering g), and separately that it &quot;deleted considering h)&quot;. In the 2022 text, considering</p>\n<p>h) is the paragraph reading &quot;that administrations wishing to introduce and bring into use beam</p>\n<p>WPT applications should consider the exposure limits for non-ionizing electromagnetic fields&quot;.</p>\n<p>The summary lists that paragraph as deleted, and lists the h) slot as refilled by the old</p>\n<p>recognizing c), on the benefits of harmonised frequency ranges.</p>\n<p>Be careful about how far that goes. The draft text itself is Document 1/85, restricted to ITU</p>\n<p>members, so what is established here is what the public summary says: one deletion, and no</p>\n<p>relocation named for it. The obligation may well reappear elsewhere in the revised text. The</p>\n<p>summary does not say where, and I have not seen the draft.</p>\n<p>It changes no exposure limit either way. Exposure limits do not come from SM.2151. ICNIRP&apos;s 2020</p>\n<p>radiofrequency guidelines set a general public whole-body reference level of 10 W/m² incident</p>\n<p>power density between 2 and 300 GHz, averaged over 30 minutes, and IEEE C95.1-2019 is the other</p>\n<p>instrument a regulator will reach for. A Recommendation that drops a pointer to them does not</p>\n<p>move either number. What it moves is what a spectrum administration reads when it first opens</p>\n<p>the only ITU-R text naming bands for this technology.</p>\n<p>One caveat that this site attaches every time the band comes up. The 5 725-5 875 MHz row is ISM</p>\n<p>beam WPT between devices on the ground. 5.8 GHz is not regulatorily available for space-to-Earth</p>\n<p>power transmission: there is no Article 21 space-to-Earth power flux-density row for it in the</p>\n<p>Radio Regulations, Edition of 2024, and wireless power transmission has no status in the</p>\n<p>Regulations at all.</p>\n<h2 id=\"the-clutter-model-that-is-about-to-reach-5-8-ghz\">The clutter model that is about to reach 5.8 GHz</h2>\n<p>Administrative Circular CACE/1205, dated 9 September 2026, is the Study Group 3 twin of the</p>\n<p>above: one draft revision adopted, Member States asked to reply by 9 November 2026. It is a</p>\n<p>revision of P.2108-1, &quot;Prediction of clutter loss&quot;, and its annex is specific: &quot;The revision</p>\n<p>extends the lower frequency limit of the method from 10 GHz down to 500 MHz.&quot; The same annex</p>\n<p>says the clutter loss distribution, today a function of elevation angle and frequency, becomes</p>\n<p>additionally a function of ground station height and median clutter height.</p>\n<p>The current text bounds that model tightly. Section 3.3 of Annex 1 in P.2108-1 covers the case</p>\n<p>where one end of the path is inside man-made clutter and the other is a satellite, aeroplane or</p>\n<p>other platform above the Earth, and states its validity as 10 to 100 GHz, elevation angles 0 to</p>\n<p>90 degrees, applicable to urban and suburban environments. So today, for an Earth-space path at</p>\n<p>5.8 GHz, the model does not apply. There is no ITU-R statistical clutter figure to cite. After</p>\n<p>approval there would be one.</p>\n<p>The magnitude is worth knowing before deciding whether to care. Evaluated at the model&apos;s own</p>\n<p>lowest valid frequency, 10 GHz, for a 10 degree elevation angle and the median location,</p>\n<p>equation (7) of P.2108-1 gives roughly 14 dB of clutter loss. That figure is an estimate</p>\n<p>computed from the published equation, not a measurement, and it sits at the edge of the model&apos;s</p>\n<p>stated range. At 5 degrees it is near 21 dB. Tens of decibels, in other words, for a terminal</p>\n<p>low down among buildings and trees, falling away quickly as the elevation rises.</p>\n<p>Here is the case against caring. This is a model of clutter loss on an interference path in</p>\n<p>urban and suburban surroundings. The sites anyone would actually put a rectenna on are open</p>\n<p>land, chosen precisely to have no clutter, and this revision does not change a power link</p>\n<p>budget, a beam, or a safety case. What it changes is the arithmetic available to whoever has to</p>\n<p>show that a ground station in a town neither causes nor suffers harmful interference, at a</p>\n<p>frequency where that arithmetic currently has no ITU-R method at all.</p>\n<h2 id=\"how-to-read-the-stream\">How to read the stream</h2>\n<p>Approval by correspondence is a quiet procedure and its calendar is public. Two deadlines are</p>\n<p>live now: 26 October 2026 for the SM.2151 revision, and 9 November 2026 for the P.2108</p>\n<p>revision. In both cases Member States are asked to tell the Secretariat whether they approve,</p>\n<p>the results are announced in a later circular, and the approved text is published after that.</p>\n<p>The publication step is the one the editions pages report, and it is the last event in the</p>\n<p>chain.</p>\n<p>The practical consequence is small and worth doing. If you maintain a list of the editions you</p>\n<p>cite, do not refresh it from the editions pages alone. Read the circular index, note the Study</p>\n<p>Group and the annex, and treat a circular dated last week as better evidence than a publications</p>\n<p>page dated today. It cost two fetches to establish everything above.</p>\n<h2 id=\"what-would-change-my-mind\">What would change my mind</h2>\n<p>Three things, and each is checkable by somebody other than me.</p>\n<p>If the ITU&apos;s editions pages pick up P.372-18, P.311-20 and P.2041-1 within a day or two of</p>\n<p>publication, and publication itself follows approval by a predictable interval, then the</p>\n<p>complaint shrinks to a labelling matter: the page means published and says In force. I would</p>\n<p>still want the page to say which it means, but &quot;lagging indicator&quot; would be the wrong phrase for</p>\n<p>a queue that moves on schedule. The test is the next approval round.</p>\n<p>If someone with ITU member access reads Document 1/85 and finds that the duty to consider</p>\n<p>non-ionising exposure limits survives elsewhere in the revised SM.2151 text, then the second</p>\n<p>section above is describing a tidy-up rather than a removal, and I would correct it. The public</p>\n<p>summary is all I have, and a summary is not a text.</p>\n<p>And if a Member State objects before 26 October, the SM.2151 revision does not enter into force</p>\n<p>as adopted, in which case the band that is not yet in Table 1 stays out of it and the argument</p>\n<p>about what the revision does becomes hypothetical. Objections are rare in this procedure. They</p>\n<p>are not impossible.</p>\n<h2 id=\"sources\">Sources</h2>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-r/md/00/cace/cir/R00-CACE-CIR-1206!!PDF-E.pdf\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-r/md/00/cace/cir/R00-CACE-CIR-1206!!PDF-E.pdf</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-r/md/00/cace/cir/R00-CACE-CIR-1205!!PDF-E.pdf\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-r/md/00/cace/cir/R00-CACE-CIR-1205!!PDF-E.pdf</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-r/md/00/cace/cir/R00-CACE-CIR-1203!!PDF-E.pdf\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-r/md/00/cace/cir/R00-CACE-CIR-1203!!PDF-E.pdf</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.itu.int/md/R00-CACE-CIR/en\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https://www.itu.int/md/R00-CACE-CIR/en</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-P.372/en\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-P.372/en</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-P.311/en\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-P.311/en</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-P.2041/en\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-P.2041/en</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-P.2108/en\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-P.2108/en</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.itu.int/dms_pubrec/itu-r/rec/p/R-REC-P.2108-1-202109-I!!PDF-E.pdf\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https://www.itu.int/dms_pubrec/itu-r/rec/p/R-REC-P.2108-1-202109-I!!PDF-E.pdf</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-SM.2151/en\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-SM.2151/en</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.itu.int/dms_pubrec/itu-r/rec/sm/R-REC-SM.2151-0-202209-I!!PDF-E.pdf\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https://www.itu.int/dms_pubrec/itu-r/rec/sm/R-REC-SM.2151-0-202209-I!!PDF-E.pdf</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.itu.int/pub/R-REP-SM.2505\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https://www.itu.int/pub/R-REP-SM.2505</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.itu.int/pub/R-REG-RR\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https://www.itu.int/pub/R-REG-RR</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.icnirp.org/cms/upload/publications/ICNIRPrfgdl2020.pdf\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https://www.icnirp.org/cms/upload/publications/ICNIRPrfgdl2020.pdf</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"https://standards.ieee.org/ieee/C95.1/4940/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https://standards.ieee.org/ieee/C95.1/4940/</a></p>"
}