The IARU is an organisation and was founded in 1925 during a meeting in Paris. IARU Region 1 joines national radio amateur associations from more than 150 countries.

From the early beginning the Radio amateurs were conscious that their interests needed to be defended by a world-wide organization. Belgium was one of the co-founders of IARU Region in Paris in 1925. The IARU aims to co-ordinate local (national) efforts in a world-wide frameset. In each country, a single radio society is selected by the IARU to represent this country in the IARU. It always is the society which bests represents the amateurs, in numbers as well as in quality of representation.

The UBA (including its former names such as Réseau Belge) has been member of the IARU since the birth of IARU R1. Other radio societies in Belgium are of regional nature or do only cover very specific aspects of amateur radio, and group only a very small number of radio amateurs.

Traditionally the UBA has been very active in international matters. Rene Vanmuysen, ON4VY (SK), launched the idea of reciprocal licensing. Gaston Bertels, ON4WF, past president and honorary president of the UBA, is the chairman of Eurocom, a workgroup which is actively watching the making of new laws for the growing Europe, and he has achieved some wonderful things in this respect for all European Community radio amateurs

One of the activities of the IARU is to make a bandplan which makes it possible for all radio amateurs to live together in harmony on the often congested bands. While the ITU and the local authorities decide on which frequency bands can be use for amateur radio, the plan on how to use these spectrums is, in most countries, left to the radio amateur organizations, which have worked out a worldwide bandplanning scheme.

Radio frequencies are attributed to the various radio services by the ITU (which is part of the UN). The individual countries can further specify how the various bands should be used. In certain countries band segments are attributed to specific transmission modes (e.g. in the USA). Other countries do not at all regulate in this detail (e.g. Belgium).

Here you will find an overview of the complete bandplanning for Region 1.