At its final meeting Thurs., the FCC’s Public Safety National Coo...

The Commission created the committee in Jan. 1999 to submit for FCC approval an operational plan to achieve nationwide interoperability for the 24 MHz of spectrum set aside for public safety at 700 MHz and to recommend certain interoperability standards. At a general membership meeting Thurs., the group agreed to recommend that followup work be handed off to the National Public Safety Telecom Council, which would meet without the formal Federal Advisory Committee Act mandate that the NCC has had. The Telecom Industry Assn. (TIA) has been working on a standard for wideband data operations at 700 MHz based on Motorola- developed scalable adaptive modulation (SAM) technology on 50 kHz channels. Glen Nash, a past pres. of the Assn. of Public Safety Communications Officials and NCC technology subcommittee chmn., said TIA had made a “Herculean effort” to develop standards given the expedited timeline. The NCC earlier had worked on Project 25 as the narrowband digital voice standard for the 700 MHz interoperability channels, which the FCC adopted in 2001. Participants have said one challenge of the wideband data interoperability standards was that such operations were new in the band, so no equipment existed as the standards work was coming together. John Oblak, chief engineer of E.F. Johnson, who represented TIA at NCC meetings, said TIA had published documents on 6 of 7 standards for wideband air interface operations, including those connected to the physical layer and packet data specifications. Work for now isn’t moving ahead on a text messaging document because there are no open industry standards in that area on which the group could draw. “We found nothing available in the public domain,” Oblak said. There were no open protocols since services available were based on proprietary protocols, he said. Nash said that while the documents were based on 50 kHz channels, they were scalable up to 150 kHz channels based on future technology advances. In other areas, interoperability subcommittee Chmn. John Powell presented recommendations on state roles. The group said FCC rules should clarify the role of states in State Interoperability Executive Committees (SIECs), which administer interoperability channels at 700 MHz. “There are several examples where state governments are using their SIEC to control the interoperability channels,” the subcommittee said. It said the rules should require that SIECs or similar regional bodies include representatives from all levels of public safety agencies. Wallman ticked off a list of events that had occurred since the group began its work, including the Sept. 11 attacks, 2 wars, a new national alert system and a new Dept. of Homeland Security. “You should be very proud of the accomplishments you have achieved over the last 4 years,” she said.