PUBLIC SAFETY AGENCIES WRESTLE WITH SPECTRUM CHANGES EYED AT FCC

Acting NTIA Dir. Michael Gallagher and FCC Office of Engineering & Technology Chief Edmond Thomas held the “town meeting” as part of a 2-day NTIA forum on public safety spectrum. The meeting solicited feedback from public safety officials as part of a call for spectrum policy reform laid out by President Bush in an Executive Memorandum last year (CD June 6 p1). Bush had called for an interagency task force on stimulating more efficient use by federal operators. The year-long process -- to result in reports that will be delivered to the White House May 29 -- also is designed to gather feedback from the private sector and local and state public safety policymakers.

One issue that emerged during the meeting was the pace of federal decisionmaking on spectrum use. Thomas said that the length of time the 800 MHz proceeding had been pending at the FCC was a result of the difficulty of technical issues. He said the record was filled with technical options the Commission could follow to mitigate public safety interference at 800 MHz, and the remaining issues to be resolved involved policy. Nextel, public safety operators and some private wireless groups have backed a “consensus plan.” It would entail extensive rebanding and Nextel reimbursement of relocated incumbents’ moving costs up to $850 million. A competing plan by CTIA and others would rely on best practices and other techniques to fix interference, rather than rebanding.

“From a technical point of view, the record wasn’t even complete” until late fall, Thomas said. At that time, FCC officials met with proponents of competing plans to flesh out technical details, including analysis supported by Motorola and others on technical steps for mitigating interference. The technical information provided to the Commission since late fall rounded out the pros and cons on technical aspects of different proposals, he said. “I think it would have been absolutely unconscionable if the Commission had made a ruling, say, in October of last year, because we would probably have been wrong,” he said. The Commission has taken extra time in the proceeding “to completely analyze the record” before reaching a final decision, Thomas said: “I think we're pretty close to that.”

John Powell, chmn. of the Cal. Statewide Interoperability Exec. Committee, asked whether the FCC’s consideration of spectrum sharing for public safety operators implied those operators “have excess spectrum to share.” When the FCC adopted secondary markets rules last year, it approved a further notice that weighed the possibility of extending the leasing model, in part by asking whether public safety should be among additional bands for which leasing would be allowed. The issue also has come up in the FCC’s cognitive radio proceeding, which explored public safety operators’ allowing leasing of underused spectrum capacity. Thomas said that involved the question of whether a public safety licensee saw fit to make spectrum available to commercial operators for a certain period if there were a “preemption” tool for reclaiming it in emergencies. “Nothing is a done deal, we're asking questions,” Thomas said. The last thing the Commission is likely to do is “order” public safety to share spectrum, he said. Powell said he still had a concern that the finances of public safety license-holders were controlled by mayors or city councils that might view spectrum sharing as a “revenue source.”

As for public safety-private sector partnerships, Thomas said he was intrigued by the possibility of public safety agencies’ addressing interoperability problems by using commercial spectrum, such as cellular operations. He acknowledged that questions had been raised about that scenario, including on the reliability of cellphone networks for first responders. “I'm wondering if there’s an opportunity for the cellular community and the public safety community to work something out, either in the shorter term for interoperability or in the longer term,” Thomas said.

Thomas also faced questions about the “interference temperature” proceeding the FCC opened last fall. The point would be to place a cap on the noise environment in which receivers operated. To the extent a ceiling in a band wasn’t reached, a user operating below that threshold would gain additional operating flexibility. The idea has “generated tremendous” concern in some quarters, Thomas said. He stressed that the proceeding the FCC opened was taking a limited approach, trying out the idea in spectrum for high- powered satellite uplinks. “One thing that is clear to me is that we're not going to do it everywhere, we may not go beyond the bands we have chosen,” he said. If the idea is used in other bands, the Commission would take care to protect incumbents, he said: “The FCC is not on a binge. We are going to do this slowly, judiciously.”

“I am all for technology innovation and a new paradigm in spectrum management,” said Sean O'Hara, research & communications engineer for Syracuse Research Corp. “I'm wondering if a lot of resources that went into these dockets such as the interference temperature docket and the cognitive radio docket could be better put into some of the more urgent public safety issues.” He said public safety agencies had weighed in at the FCC on how analog stations could share more of the 700 MHz spectrum with public safety officials, who wouldn’t have full access to 24 MHz in that band until the DTV transition was complete.

On interference temperature, Gallagher said “it’s a wonderful efficiency discipline on spectrum use. As we look at spectrum use in this country, the way forward is through sharing and sharing technologies.” He said the idea was important for “sending signals” to the high-tech sector that it had a shot at getting new sharing technologies through the regulatory process. Technologies such as cognitive radio systems ultimately free spectrum capacity for creative uses, including in public safety, Gallagher said. For entities that aren’t using their spectrum at optimum capacity, it “quickens their pace” to either use it better or explore sharing opportunities with others, he said. “It’s not clear if it’s a good idea. It’s not clear if it’s a bad idea,” Thomas said of the interference temperature idea. “It’s certainly not a fait accompli.”