[LEAPSECS] ITU-R SG7 to consider UTC on October 4

[Steve Allen]

According to the ITU-R the next meeting of SG7 will happen in Geneva on
2010-10-04 and 2010-10-12.

According to the US ITAC-R the issue of leap seconds in UTC
will be considered by ITU-R SG7.

The summary from V.  Timofeev explains that last year ITU-R WP7A
decided that they could not reach consensus and that they had
addressed all the technical issues, so they advanced the proposed
revision of Rec 460 to SG7.  In the absence of approval from WP7A, SG7
could not approve, nor send it back to WP7A, so the draft has waited.

Timofeev has released a questionnaire to the delegations along with
instructions that SG7 should only consider technical issues.
Technical issues would mean the draft is to return to WP7A.
Other-then-technical issues are to be referred to the
Radiocommunication Assembly.

The 4 (technical) questions are

    Do you support maintaining the current arrangement of linking UT1
    and UTC (to provide a celestial time reference)?

    Do you have any technical difficulty in introducing leap second
    today?

    Would you support the revision of Recommendation ITU-R TF.460-6?

    If it is agreed to eliminate leap second within 5 years after
    approval of the revision of Recommendation ITU-R TF.460-6, would
    that create technical difficulties for your administration?

The US draft answers from USWP7A Chairman Wayne Hanson are

    no
    yes
    yes
    no

The US SG7 will have a telecon on 2010-08-16.

I expect that some of this content should appear at
https://www.ussg7.org/default.aspx
Other international delegations are presumably engaged in similar
review processes.

--
Steve Allen                 <sla at ucolick.org>                WGS-84 (GPS)
UCO/Lick Observatory        Natural Sciences II, Room 165    Lat  +36.99855
University of California    Voice: +1 831 459 3046           Lng -122.06015
Santa Cruz, CA 95064        http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/     Hgt +250 m