[LEAPSECS] WRC Final Acts

[Steve Allen]

As pointed out by the IEEE reporter in
http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/standards/the-eight-year-leap-second-delay-might-not-be-as-bad-as-it-seems

The Provisional Final Acts of WRC-15 are visible at
http://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-r/opb/act/R-ACT-WRC.11-2015-PDF-E.pdf
These include

=> MOD to Radio Regulation 1.14
Page 1 has the new text on the meaning of Coordinated Universal Time.

=> MOD to Radio Regulation 2.5
Page 2 has the new text on the meaning of calendar dates.

=> Resolution COM5/1 (WRC-15)
Definition of time scale and dissemination of time signals via radiocommunication systems
Starting on page 357 is three pages of bureaucratese saying that UTC
remains equivalent to mean solar time or GMT and shall stay that way
until 2023.  In the mean time there should be more studies involving
the alphabet soup of agencies IMO, ICAO, CGPM, CIPM, BIPM, IERS, IUGG,
URSI, ISO, WMO and IAU.

That list of agencies is notable in that none of those are involved in
defining standards for computing systems.  That is incongruent with
repeated assertions that the suppression of the leap second is needed
for the sake of computing systems.  It remains unclear how the ITU-R
can move toward a resolution of this issue.

--
Steve Allen                 <sla at ucolick.org>               WGS-84 (GPS)
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