Public safety needs a plan B

The government – not just the Federal Communications Commission – failed in its plan to deploy a mixed-use network that could be used by regular Joes and the public-safety community (in times of emergency, or whenever else they need it). The D-Block plan did not work. That much we know.
Among members of Congress, self-proclaimed public-interest groups and public-safety agencies themselves, there are a lot of words flying around mixed in with a little finger-pointing. Depending on what you read, and what you believe, either FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, public safety itself or Cyren Call founder Morgan O’Brien caused the downfall of the D Block.
It makes me nervous that people are going to spend too much time and effort looking back when their collective energy should be spent trying to find a solution. I understand that we as a nation have an obligation to make sure nothing illegal was done by any party involved in the D-Block debacle, but that work should not overshadow the government’s first mission: fixing public-safety communications.
I never liked the idea of a mixed use network because I never understood how it would work. Who could successfully build a network, tell people they can use it, uh, most of the time, but sometimes, even when you really want to use it, you won’t be able to. (I still don’t understand priority access and keep thinking in the back of my mind there’s going to be a lawsuit over that some day).
So after two years of trying, the estimated $60 billion public-safety interoperability problem is no closer to a resolution than it was when Cyren Call first came up with the public-private partnership idea.
I’m not going to even try to lay out alternatives to how the United States should proceed next, but a few things are clear: It’s time to act; it’s time to fund public-safety communications at the federal level and give incentives and punishments to state and local agencies depending on their compliance. As a nation, we can’t afford to waste another two years.
As we’ve found out again and again, disasters don’t wait until we’re ready for them.