"N2EY" wrote in message
...
In article , "Bill Sohl"
writes:

"N2EY" wrote in message
...
In article , "Bill Sohl"
writes:

"N2EY" wrote in message
...
In article , "Bill Sohl"
writes:

1)The FCC won't respond to anything filed before congress has
ratified
the
new treaty (no point approaching congress, though, as that part
will
be
a
rubber stamp excercise);

And even if congress failed to ratify it would change nothing
in the ITU treaty. In fact, if congress doesn't
ratify, then the USA would simply NOT be a participant
in the treaty. The former treaty is, as of 7/5/03, null and void.

I don't think that's necessarily true, Bill. But it's academic - has
the
USA
ever not ratified a revised ITU-R treaty?

But let's pretend...for academic discussion.

IOW, let's speculate.

Just what would you
expect the USA position to be with regard to the New vs Old ITU
treaty if the USA doesn't ratify?

That depends on WHY the USA doesn't ratify, and how the
non-ratification
is
done.

There's only two ways non-ratification can be done:
1. No action is ever taken at all to ratify

Not gonna happen. It's an agenda item for The Congress. Too many other
radio
services involved.

or
2. The vote for ratification fails.

Which, to my knowledge, has never happened before.

Seems to me that the lawyers could argue it either way. Some would
argue
that the USA is no longer bound by treaty provisions of the old treaty
that
don;t appear in the new one, while others could argue the opposite.
Plus
all
sorts of variations.

Arguing for the old treaty makes no sense since the rest
of the world is on the new treaty.

Doesn't matter if it makes sense or not, some lawyers somewhere will argue
it.

Remember, ratification, if at all,
is a USA function and the end result of ITU doesn't require
a follow-up ratification process from each administration.

Yet at the same time, if nobody ratifies it, the new treaty means
nothing.

Nobody has to ratify. Many, perhaps most, administrations
simply abide by the new treaty having empowered their
repective delegations to negotiate/participate on their pehalf.

Which simply means they have a different ratification process than the
USA.
They choose their delegates and empower the delegates to ratify at the
convention, rather than afterwards.

The USA has a specific ratification process for ALL
treaties as a matter of USA law.

Exactly. And until that process is carried out, the USA will abide by the
old
treaty.

Note that at the present time, the USA is acting as if the old treaty
is
still
in force.

Actually I disagree. I believe the official posture is that the USA
acknowledges the new treaty but makes no effort to change
USA law/rules until after USA ratification. I don't believe the
FCC has any expectation that the rest of the world is
respecting old treaty obligations.

Allow me to rephrase:

....the USA is still acting *internally* as if the old treaty is still in
force.

IOW, the VEs are still giving code tests, and FCC won't allow any hams to
operate on the HF/MF ham bands unless those hams pass a code test.

The fact that there's a new one awaiting ratification doesn't make
the old one and its requirements immediately disappear.

That's only true to the extent that any specific country has their own
ratification process...and failure to ratify by one or more
countries does NOT nullify the new treaty.

Agreed. But as far as FCC rules are concerned, the old treaty is still in
force
in the USA. That's my point.

Fair enough...internally only.
And, as you note above, USA ratification is just a matter of time.

Cheers,
Bill K2UNK