The ITU’s Outgoing Spectrum Chief Expects WRC-27 to Find Room for Direct-to-Device. 151 Mobile Operators Are Already Building Toward It.

By Nick David, Editorial Lead, SatNews

The head of the ITU Radiocommunication Bureau expects the 2027 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-27) to produce a regulatory framework for direct-to-device (D2D) services in at least some mobile bands, and he will not be in the job when it does.

“I’m sure that the conference one way or another will end up with a regulatory framework for these D2D services in IMT identified bands at least on some of them,” Mario Maniewicz said at World Space Business Week in Paris on Sept. 16, where he appeared alongside the GSMA.

Maniewicz is serving his second four-year term, the limit under ITU rules, and it ends Dec. 31. His successor will be elected at the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference (PP-26) in Doha, Nov. 9–27, and will take office Jan. 1.

Three candidates have declared: Eric Fournier of France, Alexander Kühn of Germany and Revathi Mannepalli of India. WRC-27 runs in Shanghai from Oct. 18 to Nov. 12, 2027, so the Bureau will support the conference he is forecasting under a new director.

The forecast comes from the official whose Bureau prepares the conference, and it lands on an industry that has already moved. Operators have already signed partnerships, launched services and raised capital for satellites that talk directly to ordinary handsets, ahead of any WRC-level rules. Maniewicz expects those rules to arrive, at least for some of the mobile bands in question.

He also put numbers on the conference’s tilt toward space. “If you look at the past, like 10 years ago, it was less than 50% of the agenda, the satellite related agenda items,” he said. “This time is more than 80% of the agenda. I would say that it’s 85% of the agenda… So it is heavily a space-based conference that we will have next year.” His 85% counts satellite communications together with space-based scientific services.

WRC decisions bind ITU member states through the Radio Regulations, the treaty governing spectrum and orbital slots. SatNews examined the stakes in June in “The Next Arena: Why the WRC-27 Summit in Shanghai is the New Space Tech Frontline.”

Filings have grown, and not where the coverage is

Maniewicz gave three growth figures. The largest sits in the segment that draws the least attention.

Filings for large non-geostationary constellations “have increased notably in the last four to five years,” he said. “I would say that the number of filings have grown by 50%, but the number of satellites that are included in those filings have grown more. I would say that they have doubled in the last four or five years.”

Filings for narrowband satellites used for IoT, remote sensing and climate monitoring have grown faster. “We have, in the last four years, the number of filings has grown fourfold and the number of satellites involved 16-fold,” he said. “So this is a huge growth, although it’s not that, let’s say, news-provoking.”

Geostationary filings have risen 50% as well. Maniewicz attributed the increase to new government filers: “national sovereignty issues and resilience and reliability for national governments has made that more actors, mainly from developing countries, have come to the table.”

Both routes to direct-to-device are on the agenda

Two technical approaches to D2D are in play: mobile satellite service (MSS) spectrum, and the reuse of terrestrial IMT bands. Maniewicz said WRC-27 will consider both. The IMT question sits under agenda item 1.13, which covers direct connectivity between space stations and IMT user equipment in bands between 694/698 MHz and 2.7 GHz.

For MSS, “that is already something that can be done and it’s being done… We will look at more spectrum for that.” For the harder case, “we have agenda items that are looking into that. How we can use or if we can use some IMT identified bands for D2D while avoiding harmful interference to other terrestrial services.”

Higher bands are moving too. The Q/V-band framework established at WRC-19 is now being put into operation, and WRC-27 “will focus on the E-band for the regulatory framework,” Maniewicz said. That work sits under agenda item 1.10, which covers power flux-density and e.i.r.p. limits for satellite services at 71–76 GHz and 81–86 GHz. W-band and D-band are further out, and Maniewicz hedged on timing: “Although it’s not for this conference, it will probably be for the next one.” He also flagged standing agenda item 7, which he said some consider a mini-conference in itself.

What happens when regulators move first

The FCC has already authorized E-band and W-band operations for SpaceX’s Starlink Gen2 system, in separate orders in 2024 and January 2026. Asked how the ITU views national regulators authorizing bands ahead of a WRC, Maniewicz set out both the limit and the latitude.

If states depart from the treaty and go their own way, he said, “the interference will be everywhere, and the more it happens, the more chaos we will have. Nobody wants that.”

Within their own borders, though, states are free. “Nationally, the governments are sovereign to do what they want,” he said, provided they do not cause interference to their neighbors or to other operators that follow the rules. “So they can go ahead of the decisions of the WRC and try different things.” When the conference rules, they adapt: “Sometimes it goes with what they were wanting to do, sometimes it doesn’t, but they adapt afterward.”

151 operators, and no settled business model

Barbara Pareglio, the GSMA senior technical director who leads its non-terrestrial network (NTN) work, shared the stage. In a GSMA Newsroom article published ahead of the conference, she put the count at 151 operators with satellite services “live, in testing or planned,” representing an addressable footprint of “around six billion mobile connections worldwide.” On stage in Paris she put the live count at “maybe live about 50 globally,” and cautioned that the deal count runs ahead of the economics.

The GSMA is working with satellite operator associations “to understand the business model on both sides. Business model for the mobile operator, but a business model for the satellite operator.” The arrangement works only where those interests intersect, she said: “if we go in a direct, completely different direction, we will not be able to find a good business model or business case for having this cooperation.”

The two sides still compete, she added, and spectrum, because it is limited, is where the competition shows. The business-model question ran through the week’s D2D programming. Moderating the “Scaling D2D” panel the day before, GSOA director general Isabelle Mauro asked operators whether D2D is a direct-to-consumer business or capacity sold through mobile network operators.

Pareglio also questioned the use case the sector reaches for most readily. “If you say disaster, I hope we have less disaster than more disasters. So the usage in case of disaster is not continuous. So we need to look at more continuous type of use cases because that’s where I believe the business is.”

The technology, she said, remains some way from consumer expectations: “we are not even at the 3G level. So the consumer doesn’t understand if you’re using satellite, if you use WiFi, if you use 5G or 4G. For them, it’s just a service.”

The durable market, in her view, is the coverage gap. “We keep saying that maybe the 4% of the population is not covered at the moment by terrestrial network. And the 4% is still a lot of people. So we are talking about 300 million.” For a mobile operator, that population is uneconomic to reach: “the economy of that is not sustainable. Therefore, they will never do. So that is a default area for satellite.”

She named IoT as an underrated opportunity, particularly for assets that move across borders and oceans, and noted that partnership terms vary sharply by region: “the deals that you have in North America or in Africa or in Europe are completely different because geography, business, ARPU.”

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About the Author

A storyteller at heart, Nick David covers space policy, satellite markets, defense, and the technologies reshaping how humanity operates beyond Earth. With a background in creative direction, brand strategy, and editorial storytelling, he brings a modern lens to complex subjects and a relentless curiosity about what comes next.