International Telecommunication Union

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The United Nations specialised agency for information and communication technologies, founded in 1865 as the International Telegraph Union and headquartered in Geneva. Its Radiocommunication Sector maintains the Master International Frequency Register, coordinates satellite network filings between administrations, and convenes the World Radiocommunication Conferences that revise the Radio Regulations — the most recent held in Dubai from November to December 2023. It has no enforcement power over an operator: it works between member-state administrations, which are the parties to the treaty, and a dispute between two satellite systems is in the first instance a coordination problem between two governments. That structure is why spectrum and orbital slots behave less like property and more like a queue managed by mutual recognition, and why a filing made through a small administration can carry the same priority as one from a large one.