WASHINGTON-Wireless industry veterans with access to significant financial and political resources soon intend to ask policymakers to scrap plans to auction a large swath of 700 MHz spectrum being surrendered by TV broadcasters and instead use 30 megahertz for a fourth-generation nationwide public-safety network that industry would build and share with police, firefighters, medics and others in federal, state and local governments whose radio systems remain crippled by lackluster interoperability.
The proposal, set to be presented to the Federal Communications Commission later this month, is apt to set off one of the biggest controversies the wireless industry has seen in years. Moreover, the anticipated fracas over the 700 MHz public-safety plan could force prospective bidders for this June’s advanced wireless services auction to reassess their strategies for acquiring some of the 90 megahertz in the 1700 MHz and 2100 MHz bands.
The principals of 700 MHz public-safety enterprise, whose identifies will be made public in an upcoming regulatory filing, said it is time to force the issue on a chronic interoperability problem that has persisted for decades but only earned political and media notice after the deadly terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the Air Florida crash in Washington, D.C., two decades earlier. At the same time, they acknowledge their grand plan to solve the interoperability glitch once and for all will come with some pain.
The group will attempt to frame the debate in terms of national priorities. What is more important: Building a highly sophisticated national public-safety network with high-speed video streaming and other state-of-the-art broadband functionalities, or collecting billions of dollars for the U.S. Treasury from wireless carriers and others interested in paying for spectrum rights in what amounts to beachfront property?
“The public-safety community has the nation’s most demanding and important requirements for wireless communications. Yet because that community makes up a relatively small, under-funded and fragmented part of the overall wireless market, industry does not have the incentives to produce what is needed,” the 700 MHz public-safety group said. “If most of the 700 MHz spectrum is auctioned to the private sector, the opportunity to fix the problem in the most optimal way will be lost forever.”
Details are still sketchy. As such it is unclear whether public safety will rally around the proposal.
“We’d be curious to hear more about it,” said Robert Gurss, director of legal and government affairs for the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials.
While the 700 MHz public-safety plan is expected to draw support from influential business and political leaders and promises an interoperability solution that has eluded the White House, Congress and public safety for years, the potential obstacles are formidable and many.
The first hurdle is the law. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 requires the 30 megahertz in the upper 700 MHz band to be auctioned by Jan. 28, 2008.
A high-tech coalition-with names like AT&T Inc., Dell Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp., Qualcomm Inc., Intel Corp., Texas Instruments Inc. and T-Mobile Mobile USA Inc. as well as various industry trade associations representing large and small telecom firms-expended considerable financial and political resources to support legislation setting a hard date (Feb. 17, 2009) for broadcast licensees to abandon surplus frequencies used during the transition to digital TV technology.
A high-tech lobbyist, who asked to remain anonymous, declined to comment specifically on the proposal, but said if public safety had sufficient capital resources and could deploy advanced wireless equipment, first responders would have all the spectrum they need in the 24 megahertz already reserved for first responders elsewhere in the 700 MHz band.
A spokesman at CTIA, the cell-phone trade association, said the group would defer comment until a proposal is filed.
The Bush administration, facing a budget deficit of $371 billion this fiscal year, is counting on at least $12.5 billion from the auction of 700 MHz licenses. Some of the money is already earmarked for other well-meaning programs: $1.5 billion to help consumers pay for boxes to convert analog TV signals into DTV signals; $1 billion in grants to public-safety agencies for interoperable-communications systems; $30 million to reimburse TV stations in New York City for DTV transition-related costs compounded by the collapse of the World Trade Center; $75 million for low-power TV stations; $156 million to implement a national alert and tsunami warning system; $43.5 million to implement the Enhanced 911 Act of 2004; and $30 million in increased assistance for essential air service to certain communities.
In addition, Sens. David Vitter (R-La.) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.) got an amendment attached to a 2007 budget resolution that draws on 700 MHz auction revenues for hurricane protection and coastal restoration projects.
