FCC Changing Tone on D-Block Reallocation, Mirgon Says

"Back in January they told us we didn’t have a chance of even getting a bill,” Mirgon said. “We now have the King bill out of the House. We've got the Lieberman-McCain bill in the Senate. And we have a commitment from Rockefeller for a bill and a personal commitment from him to move this thing forward and get it solved. … He personally told me, ‘Look. We're going to get this done for you.'” Mirgon conceded time is short for the 111th Congress to act. APCO officials will be back in Washington in September to make another push, Mirgon said. “We have got our eye on the ball. … Six months ago we had an impossible job, so a big job is good news to us."

Many of the discussions at the APCO meeting have focused on broadband, Mirgon said. “It’s all broadband,” he said. “I think people are optimistic. I think people believe we can take this ball over the goal line."

The FCC’s position seems to have moderated since the release of the National Broadband Plan, Mirgon said. The plan incorporated a Public Safety Bureau proposal to sell the D-block in a commercial auction, while giving public safety first-in-line access to 700 MHz spectrum licensed to carriers. “They're definitely engaging us in additional discussion, but I wouldn’t interpret anything I've seen as movement,” he said. “The tone they're using with the discussion is not as firm as it was six months ago. I don’t know how to interpret that.” In a meeting two weeks ago with Chairman Julius Genachowski and FCC staff, the message was “No, our position is not going to change,” Mirgon said.

Some of APCO’s 14,000 members are upset at the FCC, Mirgon said. But “At the end of the day, [FCC officials] are doing what they believe in and the only people who can change the situation is Congress. … I've always said let’s not get hung up on the FCC’s position on this,” he said. “Yes, it would be nice for the FCC to support us, we would sure like it. The reality is our discussion has to be with the Congress, the House and the Senate, because they have to change the law to reallocate [the D-block] to public safety. A whole lot of discussion with the FCC is not really practical at this point and becomes almost a distraction."

Public Safety Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett met with the APCO board Wednesday afternoon. Mirgon said it was mostly a “meet and greet” and not specifically focused on the D-block.

Barnett told us as he left the meeting the tone was friendly. “We have a disagreement on the D-block and on almost everything else we agree and everybody is really excited that we've come so far in a year on establishing a nationwide interoperable network,” he said. “And the dialogue continues. We're looking at what’s going to happen if the D-block is reallocated. We're going to look at what’s going to happen if it’s auctioned. We want to be prepared for both because we want to move forward fast. Everybody I think understands the urgency.” The FCC has always wanted to have an open dialogue with public safety, Barnett said. “We may not always agree but we can talk.”

Projects Discussed

During a panel Wednesday, an official from the Bay Area Regional Interoperable Communication System in the San Francisco area discussed 700 MHz projects they're building out ahead of the rest of the U.S. Motorola had a big display in its booth on the APCO show floor on the Bay Area’s use of 700 MHz LTE technology.

The Bay Area project is being watched by the rest of the U.S., said Laura Phillips, general manager of the system. The agency had $6 million set aside for a test and there is no data available on 700 MHz public safety networks, she said. “We know it’s going to be tough,” she said. “We're going to be testing a lot of things. We're going to be doing things that have never been done before.” Just developing broadband devices firefighters can operate with gloves on or that will work in a variety of tough environments will in itself be difficult, Phillips said. “It’s going to be an ongoing challenge."

Phillips questioned whether carrier networks will be able to provide the same reliability as systems owned and operated by public safety. “We will own our own core,” she said. “I know that’s controversial, but … we didn’t feel that the carrier solution out there was going to meet our needs. On a daily basis, the carrier systems are overloaded and we don’t want to have a public safety officer or a firefighter competing against a download of Lindsay Lohan.”

Pinellas County, Fla., is watching closely 700 MHz pilots in the San Francisco area and Washington, D.C., said Pam Montanari, the county’s radio and data systems manager. She described the county’s long history in setting up a system that will handle data, including use of the 4.9 GHz spectrum also set aside by the FCC for the use of public safety agencies. In 2001-2002 Pinellas County tested a 700 MHz wideband system, Montanari said. “We were able to do streaming video. We were able to stream pictures,” she said: The connection rate “was phenomenal.” 4.9 GHz worked well for streaming video, video teleconferencing and other uses, but would prove expensive, Montanari said. “The problem that we ran into was the site requirements,” she said. “You need a significant number of sites -- probably 10 times what you'll need for LTE.” The county would have needed to install antennas at 300 sites for countywide system.

Pinellas County first responders now use commercial networks for data, with mixed results, Montanari said. Commercial networks offer quick start up of service, fixed pricing and evolving technology, she said. “Some of the limitations are it’s a public system, it’s shared … and there is a limitation to the number of users in area.” The St. Petersburg Police Department, one of the agencies in Pinellas County, has 500 police officers, she said. “They would come into the station everyday for roll call and then they would all get into their cars and log on. As soon as they all started logging onto their laptops they crashed the system.” The city was forced to work with three different carriers to minimize system overload.