A paper to be discussed at the IARU Region 1 Conference in Varna-Albena, Bulgaria, September 21-27, 2014 highlights the threat to continued amateur radio usage of our 23 cm allocation which is now being used by the Galileo GPS system. The amateur 23 cm allocation includes a key Amateur Satellite Service uplink band at 1260-1270 MHz.

Michael Kastelic OE1MCU, Chair of the IARU R1 VHF/UHF/Microwave Committee has written the paper VA14_C5_36 which says:

After the last reports and slides received by the author, it seems that radio amateurs will lose the 23 cm band in the near future. That is the reason for this late proposal.

We can be optimistic, but more than a small piece of spectrum for near band communication will not survive. Also the enthusiastic testing with ATV on 70 cm is not a replacement for 23 cm, because this will cause disturbance to our amateur satellites and all cars will stay locked if the ISM band is used.

GNSS – Credit Microwave Journal

Proposal:
Radio amateurs need a new allocation (like 1300 -1310 MHz) for the agenda of the World Radio Conference 2018 (WRC2018) so that amateurs get back spectrum near the existing 23 cm band.

Further it is proposed to engage the EC after WRC-2015 to bring this theme to the
agenda for WRC-2018 with high priority

Read the paper at http://tinyurl.com/IARU-VA14-C5-36

Potential Interference To Galileo From 23 cm Band Operations
http://www.southgatearc.org/articles/galileo.htm

Up until now there have only been four Galileo test satellites in orbit which have been used to validate the system. The first two satellites of the operational Galileo GPS constellation were launched on August 22, 2014, they will be followed by further launches over the next 3 years. 

During the initial test phase two German ATV repeaters were shutdown due to interference to a user’s Galileo receiver, they were:
• DB0QI which was 18 km from the receiver
• DB0ITV which was 55 km from the receiver
It is thought both repeaters were running an ERP of just 15 watts, but the ERP figure has not been confirmed.

It appears that all 23 cm repeaters in Austria have been shutdown.

Alessio Sacchi IZ4EFN posted the following information regarding the situation in Italy on the AMSAT Bulletin Board:
Few weeks back I spoke with a member of the Italian CC, as our club was going to add a 1296 MHz port to a local repeater. He said Alenia Space has submitted strong warnings regarding possible interference with Galileo and he anticipated it could be hard to get a frequency assigned in that portion of the spectrum in the near future.

IARU R1 VHF/UHF/Microwaves discussion forum
http://www.thersgb.org/forums/index.php?forums/vhfmicrowave/

Other VHF/UHF/Microwave papers for the Conference can be downloaded from
http://www.iaru-r1.org/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=&func=fileinfo&id=522