It’s been nearly three years since attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, yet the city still does not have interoperable public-safety systems. It’s unthinkable. And yet, it is reality. The news is somewhat better in Jefferson County., Colo., where the fifth anniversary of the Columbine tragedy will be remembered this week; the county has made significant strides toward interoperability among communications equipment.
The City of New York is looking at 4.9 GHz to house its state-of-the art public-safety communications system. Why there? In short, because 50 megahertz of spectrum has been promised to public safety in that band. The fact that no equipment is authorized to operate commercially at 4.9 GHz evidently was not enough to steer New York’s Mayor Bloomberg toward a solution that could operate at 800 MHz or 700 MHz. The city must be betting that someone can get equipment up and operating at 4.9 GHz before anything is cleared up at 700 MHz or 800 MHz. It’s a sad bet.
In the middle of this very serious issue sits the Federal Communications Commission, with some huge decisions on its plate on how to improve matters for the public-safety community, which not only faces interoperability issues and lack of spectrum, but also interference from commercial wireless systems.
The FCC must decide whether to adopt some form of the Consensus Plan, promoted by Nextel Communications Inc. and much of the public-safety community, to try to fix interference to public-safety systems operating at 800 MHz. As the agency nears a decision, lobbying has been ratcheted up a few notches. Verizon Wireless said it would bid at least $5 billion for frequencies that would be offered to Nextel under one proposal. Of course, there is no auction for those frequencies, so Verizon is not obligated to write anyone a check. Instead, its posturing simply puts a price tag on the spectrum.
Meanwhile, a think-tank associate pointed out last week that Nextel doesn’t take part in big auctions; its strength is lobbying. Remember how Nextel slipped in and almost walked away with NextWave Telecom Inc.’s frequencies without an auction? The man’s got a point.
Commissioners will have a nearly impossible task reaching a decision that is fair to the American public, fair to Nextel and that would benefit public safety without having the entire matter end up in court.
All of a sudden, New York’s plan for clean spectrum at 4.9 GHz doesn’t look that bad. No one else is lobbying for it-yet.
