The World Administrative Radio Conference for Maritime Mobile Telecommunications opened at the Geneva International Conference Centre on 22 April 1974 and finished work on 8 June with the signature of the Final Acts, which came into force on 1 January 1976.

For seven weeks some 500 delegates from 104 countries examined nearly 2200 proposals for the revision of those parts of the Radio Regulations and Additional Radio Regulations related to the maritime mobile service. The Conference was presided over by Mr. R.M. Billington (United Kingdom). Its Vice-Chairmen were Mr. Yun-chou Liu (People's Republic of China), Mr. Robert E. Lee (United States), Mr. A. Badalov (USSR), and Mr. A. M'Bodji Dione (Senegal).

It was a sequel to the Maritime Conference held in Geneva in 1967 which adopted a recommendation that a World Administrative Radio Conference be convened to establish on the basis of single-sideband operation a new Frequency Allotment Plan for high-frequency radiotelephone coast stations and to amend the associated provisions of the Radio Regulations. The new Allotment Plan, came into force in 1978 in accordance with a calendar drawn up by the Conference and was to be kept up to date by a procedure also established by the Conference.

The Conference also adopted a large number of measures to ensure the smooth operation of radiocommunications in the maritime mobile service, taking into account the trend towards an increase in radiotelephone traffic, a decline in manual radiotelegraph traffic, and an expansion of radiotelegraph traffic using direct-printing systems.

This summary includes an excerpt from an article that originally appeared in the Telecommunication Journal 41, no. 8 (1974): 471-472.