FCC Waivers and Funding Could Fuel Nationwide Public Safety Network

With the 700 MHz D Block not scheduled for auction until 2011, the FCC took a significant step on May 12 toward building a nationwide public safety network for use by first responders when it announced conditional approval for 21 petitions from cities and counties across the country to begin the process of building their own Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks.

The LTE networks will use the 10 MHz of spectrum that public safety was granted in 1997. The FCC approvals require that each LTE network interoperate within the proposed national D Block 700 MHz network, part of the FCC's National Broadband Plan.

“I think it is going to have a very profound effect upon our ability to get a nationwide network because if we can get some of these early build-out cities or regions or states done, we’ll get some early lessons and learn what works and what doesn’t,” said Harlin McEwen, chairman of the Public Safety Spectrum Trust (PSST).

To ensure interoperability, the commission has set numerous conditions on its approval of the petitions, according to an FCC press release:

• Agencies must work with the recently established Emergency Response Interoperability Center to ensure interoperability with the rest of the network as it is built.
• The networks must be built using the next-generation mobile communication standard LTE, which the major carriers have agreed to support in the build out of their fourth generation networks.
• Public safety agencies building networks must participate in network testing environments being sponsored by the Public Safety Communications Research Program and Washington, D.C.
• The agencies must provide all public safety agencies inside the coverage areas access to the networks. Several states were granted permission to build networks and would be required to provide access to local law enforcement agencies under the commission’s rules.

The FCC also required petitioners to have funding in place to build the networks.

Building out a nationwide broadband network for public safety use is estimated to cost between $6.5 billion and $20 billion depending on the timing of how the network is built out and the government’s ability to leverage commercial carriers’ investments, said FCC spokesman Robert Kenny.

The FCC requested that Congress appropriate $6.5 billion to help fund the network, and a user fee of between 50 cents to $1.00 levied on broadband connections has been proposed to support the network’s build out.

As a result of the commission's action, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) will accept applications from those agencies granted waivers from June 1, 2010, to July 1, 2010. The NTIA noted in a news release that these jurisdictions had been discouraged from applying for Broadband Technology Opportunities Program grants because they lacked the legal authority to use the spectrum.

The amount of funds that would be made available wasn’t specified.  

Jurisdictions have already begun reaching out to the PSST to begin working with the trust on moving forward, McEwen said during a phone interview following a meeting with officials on May 13 in Seattle.

The PSST has formed an Operator Advisory Committee to ensure that the waiver applicants’ plans are coordinated with the national strategy. “We will be mapping out a forward moving strategy to keep this going fairly quickly with these waiver applicants, because there are things they can’t do without us and I don’t want to hold that up,” McEwen said.

Los Angeles County, one of the waiver applicants, has had a regional interoperable communications system to connect 34,000 first responders from 85 agencies in the works for years. As part of that effort, it already had 10 MHz of spectrum and the FCC’s action clears the use of an additional 10 MHz of spectrum for applications requiring broadband.

With this additional 10 MHz of spectrum, members of the Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System (LA-RICS) consortium should get increased access to information to improve the response to their target hazards. “We are going to try to attempt to deliver to our customers, which is everybody in the region, additional opportunity for the data and [the user community] to use their mobile data computers and other things we can put through that pipe,” said Scott Poster, interim director of LA-RICS, “which gives us a better opportunity for all the different fire departments and police departments to have graphics, they could be using better things for their target hazards.”

The network will improve agencies’ ability to comply with a mandate requiring that they have access to information on schools in the region to aid incident response.

LA-RICS was scheduled to hold a planning meeting Monday, May 17, to discuss how best to move forward and take advantage of this new development.

[Photo courtesy of Michael Mancino/FEMA.]