DHS head pledges interoperability by ’08

WASHINGTON-Public-safety interoperability, a political football since 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, has become a red-hot political hot potato.
Following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and again when deadly storms ravaged the Gulf Coast last year, policy-makers voiced indignant outrage that federal, state and local public-safety agencies could not communicate with each other during emergencies. They demanded action. Little was done, though.
Now, there is a virtual free-for-all in which everyone seems to have a solution for public safety. Silver bullets are flying everywhere. The bandwagon is overflowing with interoperability champions. But being on the political radar screen does not necessary mean police, firefighters, medics and other first responders are any nearer to securing seamless interoperability and the fat wireless pipes needed to support video and other data-intensive transmissions.
Indeed, in a bitter ironic twist, the campaign for interoperability and additional public-safety spectrum is at risk of becoming politically gridlocked even as Cyren Call Communications Corp. and other public-safety organizations fight to take off the table half of 60 megahertz in the 700 MHz band that Congress said must be auctioned by January 2008.
Interoperability politics have taken a helter-skelter turn.
On Oct. 30, six months after receiving Cyren Call’s broadband public-safety plan, the Federal Communications Commission put the proposal on public notice. Four days later, the FCC dismissed the Cyren Call petition because it requires legislative changes. The agency agreed to keep the record open, prompting scores of public-safety organizations-large and small-to file comments last week supporting for a Cyren Call approach otherwise opposed by the mobile-phone industry. Verizon Wireless and others in the cellular industry insist a public-private public-safety model that accomplishes most everything envisioned by Cyren Call can be accomplished without dipping into valuable 700 MHz spectrum being eyed by existing wireless carriers and WiMax hopefuls.
“The scars from 9/11 and Katrina with the American public run deep,” said Morgan O’Brien, chairman of Cyren Call. “When combined with a dawning realization that the needs of public safety currently come last, not first, in our nation’s regulatory agenda, Congress will hear a roar that something needs to be done.”
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, does not need a wakeup call. Thompson and other lawmakers have been pushing for more action on interoperability from the GOP-led Congress and Bush administration for years. Thompson calls public-safety interoperability a top priority, and House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has promised swift action on public-safety interoperability when the new Democratic-led House and Senate begin work early next year.
Thompson reportedly was stunned when Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told him last month his massive department only recently has begun to examine interoperability requirements of first responders across the country.
Last week, Chertoff told the 2006 Grants & Training National Conference he’s got the problem licked.
“The bottom line is we have to be able to communicate during a disaster, and this remains a priority for all of us. We’re going to get it done,” Chertoff said in prepared remarks.
As such, Chertoff vowed to have major cities deemed high security risks interoperable ready by the end of 2007, and to provide inter-agency, multi-jurisdiction public-safety communications capability in all states by the end of 2008.
“We have the first generation of equipment,” said Chertoff, who previously stated interoperability is not a technology issue. “We know that what’s needed at this point is finishing the governance plans and the documents, and we also know that we need to complete the job of getting the specifications for the next generation of digital equipment out there so you can complete the process of being able to do your own planning for your next generation of purchases.”
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration is overseeing a $1 billion grant program to bring public-safety interoperable communications to states.
However, former NTIA chiefs Michael Gallagher (Bush administration) and Larry Irving (Clinton administration) said in a newly released report that $1 billion “will not be sufficient to deploy advanced networks nationwide.” They urged Congress to address interoperating and other first responder funding requirements.
Cyren Calls’ O’Brien said spectrum and political will remain keys to bringing public-safety communications capabilities-including interoperability-into the post-9/11 world.
“For every one citizen heard from in this proceeding, there are ten, or a hundred, or a thousand that would step up and say the same thing if they knew that we have a regulatory agenda in Washington in which ‘dropped calls’ are accorded a higher priority than the lives of our first responders and the lives and property of the citizens they are charged with protecting,” O’Brien said.