What hath WARC wrought

The 1979 World Administrative Radio Conference (WARC) adopted frequency allocations and other radio regulations affecting the design and conditions of use of many important radio-communication services. This paper gives an overview of the decisions of the 1979 WARC and considers the constraints and boundary conditions represented by the allocations and regulations that were adopted. Attention is given to the design, operational, and regulatory consequences on government and commercial systems of certain important aspects of WARC conclusions, including new sharing conditions, bandwidth of allocations, frequency tolerances, spurious emission levels, and station-keeping and antenna pointing accuracy requirements.