WASHINGTON-Homeland security-as an overarching national policy and an omnipresent mindset created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks-has been a mixed blessing for a wireless industry which already had a good thing going generating hundreds of billions of dollars annually from the mobile phone, Wi-Fi, tower and public-safety sectors alone.
Then homeland security came along, representing billions more in potential contracts. Icing on the cake for some. For others, a welcome hedge against swings in consumer demand and economic downturns.
A $10 billion contract should be awarded this summer for an Integrated Wireless Network Infrastructure serving the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the Department of Treasury. Motorola Inc., AT&T Corp., Boeing Co., General Dynamics Corp. and Lockheed Martin Corp. are the expected contenders.
But that’s just one contract. There are many others in play. States, the venue of first responders, are upgrading wireless communications systems in the name of homeland security. Indeed, wireless technology is tailor-made for the new age of communications needs.
But homeland security is a mixed picture for the wireless industry, an uneven state of affairs with unpredictable consequences-some good and some not so good for carriers, vendors and other stakeholders in the wireless space. The pot of gold that is the associated contracts sometimes comes with strings attached. The possibility of new regulations and unfunded federal mandates lurks.
Location-based 911 wireless service was transformed from a public-safety issue to a homeland-security issue after 9/11 for all practical purposes. There’s pressure to make it happen industrywide by the end of the year.
The wireless industry has become a partner-sometimes reluctantly-of federal government in the war on terrorism. The government wants industry to share information, some of it the prized classified variety. The government wants greater access to wireless networks for emergency communications and for clandestine eavesdropping. The government wants wireless carriers to warn the citizenry when terror or disaster hits. The government wants wireless networks-along with other critical infrastructure-safe from cyber attacks and sabotage. But the feds want carriers to pay for it.
The government also wants data on network outages, something the mobile-phone industry initially had concerns about before federal regulators modified requirements.
“The industry agrees the Federal Communications Commission should get the data,” said Chris Guttman-McCabe, assistant vice president of regulatory policy and homeland security at CTIA, a trade association of cellular carriers.
What about liability? There is some cover for wireless carriers and manufacturers and others. But no one said it is airtight. Risk is a factor in the homeland-security universe.
How does it all happen? The wireless industry-through the Telecommunications Industry Association and the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions-is expending resources to develop technical standards.
Wireless systems and other telecom networks are at once enablers and targets for terrorists.
“The bad guys like our infrastructure because that’s how they deliver their payload,” said Dan Bart, senior vice president of standards and special projects at TIA. At the same time, Bart noted, terrorists know they can wreak havoc by taking down communications and information technology backbones.
Bart said the telecom industry is lucky from a security standpoint because it is more mature than other industrial sectors.
While the homeland-security establishment offers big bonuses in the form of contracts to wireless firms, it also drains resources away from other agencies-including those that police and promote the U.S. wireless business here and abroad.
In the end, however, homeland security pays for itself in this sense: A safe, secure America-at least one perceived as such-keeps Wall Street happy. Still, the terrorism factor-a new uncertainty for markets-is always out there. That wasn’t the case before 9/11.
The sweeping homeland-security overlay has tended to heighten policymakers’ interest in gridlocked or forgotten wireless issues:
c In December, Congress passed legislation establishing a $250 million state grant program to foster E911 deployment in the states.
c Wireless priority access-enabling calls of government officials and first responders to be processed ahead of other calls during emergencies-was a relatively obscure item until 9/11. Now it’s front burner stuff. Some $80 million in federal dollars were earmarked to fund CDMA priority access technology development and to complete nationwide rollout of GSM priority access service by T-Mobile USA Inc. and Cingular Wireless L.L.C. and iDEN priority access by Nextel Communications Inc.
In addition to not yet offering priority-access service, Verizon Wireless and Sprint PCS-the nation’s two CDMA wireless carriers-are not in the picture in a pilot project here to develop a digitally based alert and warning system.
c Meantime, the FCC is reviewing comments to overhaul a Cold War-era emergency warning system that today makes no use of the 174 million mobile-phone subscribers and 10 million paging users.
It is unclear which wireless technology-not to mention which technological platforms and distribution systems-will end up comprising an emergency network of networks. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, one of the 22 agencies ensconced in DHS, plans to submit a progress report to Congress in February or March.
“With each type of re-transmission medium, people are going to fall out along the way,” said Reynold Hoover, director of the office of national security coordination at FEMA.
Hoover said the digital emergency warning pilot-making use of public TV-will get access to some of the $12 million appropriated last year for emergency alert modernization.
c In the intelligence reform bill passed by Congress in 2004, lawmakers gave a big boost to first responders (and vendors) anxious to see 10 megahertz of 700 MHz taken back from TV broadcasters and set aside for high-speed wireless broadband data networks throughout the country.
c Using Flarion Technologies’ FLASH-OFDM solution with support from Motorola, the District of Columbia showcased the public safety technology (under an FCC experimental license) at last week’s presidential inauguration. It was a giant step toward possibly securing legislation this year.
c Homeland security also has yielded hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts for smart passports based on integrating radio frequency identification technology.
Still, there are headaches and surprises at every turn. Frustration abounds. Key technology officials at the Department of Homeland Security have left the agency in recent years, the most recent being Robert Liscouski, who was assistant secretary of the information assurance and infrastructure protection directorate at DHS. In December, Frank Libutti resigned as undersecretary for information assurance and infrastructure protection at DHS. And so on.
States complain that getting first-responder money from DHS is painfully slow. Firms and industry lobbyists sometimes find it difficult to access the right person in the massive, sprawling bureaucracy. And right when they figure it out, everything changes.
The first DHS chief, Tom Ridge, is out. President Bush has nominated federal judge and former Justice Department official Michael Chertoff to head the agency. Chertoff likely will be confirmed by the Senate.
“I’m looking for the new team to get in town to find out what their agenda is,” said TIA’s Bart.
