Several local emergency response agencies recently weighed in at ...
Several local emergency response agencies recently weighed in at the FCC on a proposed 800 MHz reconfiguration plan backed by Nextel, the Assn. of Public Safety Communications Officials, PCIA and others. The plan would entail a spectrum swap involving…
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700, 800 and 900 MHz and 1.9 GHz, including a Nextel funding commitment of $850 million to relocate private wireless and public safety incumbents that would be displaced. The point of the “consensus plan” is to mitigate public safety interference at 800 MHz. The Va. Fire Chiefs Assn. told the FCC it endorsed the plan, with 2 caveats: (1) That Nextel pay the entire cost of programming and replacement of public safety radios, “regardless of the dollar amount.” (2) That a “simple system be established that will allow public safety agencies to utilize the funds necessary to make the transition without any out-of- pocket/upfront expense.” The Firemen’s Assn. of the State of N.Y. told the FCC it endorsed the consensus plan, saying “first responders in New York and across the nation are increasingly at risk because their public safety radio communications are vulnerable to interference from cellular phones.” It said first responders “urgently” needed more 800 MHz spectrum to have interoperable communications among police and firefighters and neighboring jurisdictions. However, the City of Baltimore said it opposed the consensus plan, favoring instead an alternative backed by CTIA and others that relied on measures such as best practices rather than rebanding. “We have very serious concerns about a proposal that will be executed at the expense of public safety systems, like ours, that have spent money to install high-quality equipment that enables us to operate successfully in a spectrum-crowded environment,” the city told the FCC. “Baltimore’s system was updated in 1998 at a cost of some $70 million.” It said that retuning public safety systems carried an “unacceptable risk” that key systems would be impaired or interrupted during the process. “Our public safety system is not like a commercial system that can survive if impaired for a short time.”