What is an ITU zone? Why do radio operators need to know this?

Answer 1

The ITU is the cooperative international body that establishes regulations on communication. Certain regions of the world use their allocations of frequencies and communication resources for different purposes. Thus the ITU regulations are applied on a Zone basis when these differences in use are authorized. The ITU has 3 regions and 90 zones.

As a radio operator, most operating rules within a given ITU region are the same with certain exceptions that may affect just one or two of the 90 zones. This may seem like a lot of possible variation but in practice it enables the operator to find the appropriate rules for a given communication connection.