House Panel Rejects Public Safety Arguments for D-Block Reallocation

Public safety groups won’t back off, even with so many against them, said Robert Davis, president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, on a Public Safety Alliance teleconference after the hearing. The alliance wants Congress to give public safety the D-block, not sell it to carriers. Public safety realizes there are questions about funding, but “we have to lay the correct foundation for the system that we want to build before we can talk about the money,” said Davis, also chief of the San Jose, Calif., police department. “We need this. We've made our case. We're not going away. They need to get on our radio frequency and begin to truly listen to what we're saying."

Subcommittee leaders from both parties said a draft public safety bill by Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., takes the right approach in using proceeds from auctioning the D-block and other bands to fund the buildout and maintenance of the public safety network. Subcommittee Ranking Member Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., and Committee Ranking Member Joe Barton, R-Texas, urged adding language to ban the FCC from conditioning use of auctioned spectrum, including any network neutrality requirements.

Most subcommittee members rejected public safety’s arguments for directly reallocating the D-block to public safety. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., has a bill (HR-5081) to legislate that alternative. “I don’t think that’s a tenable position,” said Waxman. Without funding, the network could cost three times as much to build and the U.S. will have a patchwork “network of haves and have nots,” he said. Reallocating to public safety “would do little good” without funding, Stearns said. “Giving away valuable spectrum is not affordable and not feasible at this time,” said Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.

If Congress gave public safety the D-block, public safety likely won’t get enough money from leasing spectrum to pay for building the network, said Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va. Money from that approach may be especially hard to find in rural areas, he said. Reallocating “would also require Congress finding offsets for the D-block’s value,” estimated between $2 billion and $3 billion, before any money could be spent building the network, said Boucher.

"Nothing that I heard today persuades me that we should not go forward with the [Waxman] discussion draft” and auction the D-block, Boucher told reporters. The draft will see some edits, “but I think we have it exactly right on the D-block,” he said. No schedule is set, but the bill should go to subcommittee markup “in the very near term,” and make it to the House floor this summer, he said. If King wants to talk about the public safety legislation, “then of course we'll be happy to talk to him,” Boucher said.

It would be “unfortunate” if legislators couldn’t get public safety’s support, Stearns said during the hearing. He plans to talk to King about his bill, but legislation giving the D-block to public safety doesn’t seem likely, he said. If public safety takes the “position that you're not supporting what I think the majority” of the subcommittee wants, “that would not be good,” Stearns said. “You might want to think about a fallback position so that we all move together here in a bipartisan fashion."

Compromise may be possible between the Waxman and King bills, said Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., a co-sponsor of the King bill. “Somewhere between the King language and Mr. Waxman’s proposal to have some of it subject to auction, I think we can find common ground,” said Weiner. “The one thing we can’t allow though is any more years of inertia."

"At the core of it, we can’t get past the point that 10 MHz of spectrum is just not going to be sufficient for our needs,” said Charles Dowd, deputy chief of the New York Police Department. He represented the Public Safety Alliance at the hearing. “Our position has and always will be that we cannot rely on commercial networks.” Unless public safety gets the D-block, the U.S. could see a repeat of the communications breakdown that happened on 9/11, Paul Fitzgerald of the National Sheriffs Association said later on the teleconference.

On the witness stand, the Waxman draft’s only critics were Dowd and Verizon Wireless. They criticized the draft for not providing additional spectrum to public safety. FCC Public Safety Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett said auctioning the D-block was the quickest and most affordable way to finishing the public safety network nationwide. National Emergency Number Association CEO Brian Fontes and an official with the International Association of Fire Fighters agreed it’s more critical to secure funding than spectrum. A U.S. Cellular official and others also backed auctions.

Barnett said the U.S. won’t be able to afford a nationwide network unless it moves forward with a commercial auction. Under the FCC’s plan, public safety would save nearly $9 billion on network construction and “tens of billions” on operating costs, he said. Costs would “skyrocket” if the U.S. hands the D-block over to public safety, limiting the expansion of the network nationwide, he said. Reallocating would “nearly destroy” the commercial market for public safety, he said. But the D-block is “uniquely desirable” to public safety, said Dowd. The alliance supports King’s bill, he said. The 10 MHz D-block is adjacent to public safety’s current 10 MHz allocation, so getting the D-block would provide more throughput capacity than other spectrum, Dowd said.

Verizon Wireless believes the Waxman draft solves two of three “critical components” to completing the network: “funding and infrastructure,” said General Counsel Steve Zipperstein in opening testimony. Despite what the FCC found in a white paper earlier this week (CD April 16 p3), public safety also needs additional spectrum, he said. “We should consider the D-block an investment in public safety, an investment in our future."

Barnett said the current 10 MHz of public safety spectrum is enough “for day-to-day [operations] and most emergencies.” There are 25 times more commercial users than public safety users per megahertz, he said. Dale Hatfield, an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado, agreed the existing 10 MHz plus priority access and roaming on commercial networks during emergencies would be sufficient. Dowd said it’s unfair to compare commercial and public safety users, because public safety users require more bandwidth than commercial users.

Not all public safety groups prefer the King bill. The International Association of Fire Fighters believes the FCC plan is a “pragmatic solution,” said Jonathan Moore, a director. The King bill doesn’t provide any funding mechanism and wouldn’t make equipment affordable, he said. Reallocating the D-block would also give a competitive advantage to the few carriers capable of building a national network across 20 MHz, he said. Without competition, prices likely would increase, he said.

NENA’s “number-one priority” is securing funding, so it supports the Waxman draft, Fontes said. On the public safety call afterward, Fitzgerald said he was disappointed by Fontes’ testimony. “I wish Brian would have come out and made a statement” that NENA backed reallocating the D-block, he said. “He didn’t really make a stand. I was a little disappointed that he wasn’t stronger for this cause."

U.S. Cellular backs auctioning the D-block as long as the auction isn’t biased in favor of big carriers, said Joseph Hanley, a vice president. The FCC should auction based on cellular-market-area or economic-area licenses, he said. The company opposes “packaged bidding,” which allows bidders to bid on all-or-nothing packages of licenses, Hanley said. A “well-structured” D-block auction could raise $3 billion to $4 billion, estimated Coleman Bazelon, an economist with the Brattle Group. A second auction proposed in the legislation of the 1675 MHz-1710 MHz and 2155 MHz-2180 MHz bands could produce $7.5 billion for 50 MHz paired, he said.

The Waxman draft should set an earlier deadline for auctioning AWS-3 spectrum in the 2155 MHz-2180 MHz bands, said Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif. “I don’t think we can allow valuable spectrum to lie dormant for years.” M2Z wants to bid on the spectrum and use it to build a broadband network for low-income people, Eshoo added. The legislator also urged amending the Waxman draft to provide funding for 911 call centers: “This is an integral part of our public safety system in the country."

Legislators and witnesses spent much less time discussing a 911 bill (HR-5289) sponsored by Reps. Eshoo and John Shimkus, R-Ill. Companion legislation is in the Senate (S-3115). Stearns backs the measure “with a few changes” to find money offsetting the bill’s costs, he said. The bill provides “essential funding” to transition 911 systems to next-generation technology, said Eshoo. Shimkus said the bill would stop states who have raided 911 funds, including his own Illinois.

NENA backs the 911 bill, which will “help accelerate the nationwide transition to next-generation 911 systems,” said Fontes. The group seeks only minor edits which it’s already raised with legislative staff, he said. Verizon also backs the legislation, said Zipperstein.