"Convergence” in public safety communications could help “protect” the tens of billions of dollars public safety has invested in traditional radios over many decades, said Andy Thiessen with the Commerce Department’s Public Safety Communications Research program. Agencies that have spent millions on new radios “are not going to be looking to change over to LTE even if the LTE network could meet all of their needs,” he said on a Wednesday webinar sponsored by Urgent Communications and Harris Corp. “There’s political questions in play here as well … which is trying to make the best use of some massive investment that state or local government just made.” Convergence could take different forms, Thiessen said. “We could see convergence in the device … where maybe you have a land-mobile capability combined with an LTE capability on a single device,” he said. “We could call convergence simply the connection of a land-mobile radio capability into the LTE network itself or it could be some combination of both.” Thiessen said one key is to guarantee that public safety is no longer a niche market. Public safety has 2 million to 4 million users nationwide depending on who is counting, compared to more than 100 million each for Verizon Wireless and AT&T. “When public safety goes out to buy devices … clearly they're paying quite a bit more for those devices,” Thiessen said. The Department of Homeland Security has to rely on some 20 legacy systems, many of which were deployed more than 20 years ago, said Patrick Flynn, director of communications and outreach for the DHS Joint Wireless Program Office. LTE “enables us to leverage a wider pipe and save money, because we're able to leverage what’s currently out there,” he said. Flynn said DHS plans to play a big role in the new FirstNet once it is launched. “We have a great interest … in convergence,” said Felix Perez, director of the radio communications information division of Miami-Dade County, Fla. “Finally the IT shop is going to have to talk to the radio shop and it’s going to be a big improvement.” Perez said the county is in the process of replacing 24,000 radios and revamping its infrastructure, at a cost of some $200 million. “It’s like changing tires on a moving-fast freight train,” he said. “Today doing over-the-air programming with a land-mobile radio takes minutes,” said Joe Ross of consultant firm Televate. “With an LTE chipset inside the device it could take seconds. You could dynamically push out new fleet maps to the user community. There alone, I think it augments. I think a lot of people focus on how broadband is going to replace land-mobile radio. I don’t think there’s enough discussion about how broadband can augment today’s land-mobile radio.” Ross said “the more niche we make some of these devices … the more the costs are going to increase.” A recent study Televate did for Minnesota found that first responders preferred smartphones to traditional rugged devices by a 10 to one margin, he said.
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation suggested 50 ways to make U.S. elections more accessible, in a report ITIF released Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bnw8xy). It suggested some Internet-enabled suggestions -- such as building a site like Yelp’s for polling sites, ensuring that election websites are mobile-friendly, hosting poll worker training online and creating virtual “I Voted!” stickers -- to make elections more accessible. “Our hope is that these ideas will spur others to continue to innovate and pursue new ways of making elections more accessible for all Americans,” ITIF Accessible Voting Technology Initiative Project Director Daniel Castro wrote in the report, which is the result of a grant from the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission, a public design challenge run by OpenIDEO (http://xrl.us/bnw838) and two ITIF workshops.
The Competitive Carriers Association asked FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski to seek comment on how wireless carriers can use unclaimed funding from Phase I of the Connect America Fund. “Wireless carriers offer the best opportunity to bring much needed broadband services to unserved and underserved areas, and it only makes sense for the FCC to consider proposals from wireless carriers,” said CCA President Steve Berry. “Many of our members are ready and willing to build out these networks, but depend on USF support in order to do so. Wireless remains underfunded, and this could be an opportunity for the FCC to provide significant support for the services consumers want most."
The FCC Media Bureau granted Dish Network’s motion to dismiss its program access complaint against Madison Square Garden. The motion, submitted last week, said Dish and MSG have settled the dispute, the bureau said in an order (http://xrl.us/bnw8og). In 2010, Dish filed the complaint with the FCC, claiming MSG and Cablevision unjustly withheld its regional sports network from Dish (CD Oct 21/10 p17).
The global number of small cells is now larger than that of traditional mobile base stations, Informa Telecoms & Media said Wednesday in a report. The number of small cells now totals 6,069,224, while the number of mobile base stations is 5,925,974, Informa said. While most of the deployed small cells are residential femtocells, they also include enterprise and public-access small cells, Informa said. Small cells were able to overtake mobile base stations because mature femtocell deployments have begun to scale, Informa said, saying Sprint Nextel has deployed 1 million femtocells, up from 250,000 in 2011. Small Cell as a Service (SCaaS) has also emerged as a way for third parties to deploy a small-cell network and rent it out to multiple operators. Virgin Media is set to deploy SCaaS in the U.K., while Colt Telecom has already said it’s trialing SCaaS with a major European operator, Informa said. Others, including Europe’s Cloudberry Mobile and the U.S.’s ClearSky are also planning to offer SCaaS, Informa said. “Without this change, the mobile network simply could not sustain the continued growth in data usage,” Informa principal analyst Dimitris Mavrakis said in a news release. “Such a dramatic network transformation opens up interesting new models and over the past quarter the Small Cell as a Service idea has been gaining traction. … At the moment, this is being targeted at major operators that are looking for a simple route to establishing a small-cell network as well as smaller players that have found the barriers to entry too high to date” (http://xrl.us/bnw8mt).
Telecom hasn’t played a “forefront” role in Montana’s public service commission races, Commissioner Gail Gutsche told us in an interview. The District 4 Democrat is running for reelection against State Sen. Bob Lake, a Republican, on the Nov. 6 ballot. “We hardly regulate at all,” she said of the PSC’s telecom oversight. The FCC’s November 2011 USF order has come up multiple times, however, she said, in questions to her opponent and before a newspaper’s editorial board. The FCC reform “could increase cost of service dramatically and put some rural carriers out of business,” she said, citing great concern for rural customers. Montana has “quite good” buildout of broadband, which is an important concern, she added. Her campaign has taken her through the seven counties of District 4 and to canvassing 2,000 doors, placing cable TV and radio ads and attending other events. “People don’t know why we're important in their lives,” she said, stressing the need to educate people on what the PSC is. Most don’t know the PSC, she said. “If you start talking regulation, you put people to sleep,” she said. She was first elected to the PSC in 2008, and there are three Montana seats open this year. The big election issues in 2012 are electricity and natural gas, not telecom, she said. Those first issues tend to split the five-member commission in 3-2 votes but commissioners tend to “vote together” on telecom issues, she said. The commission race is one among many across the country this fall (CD Oct 29 p3).
Scripps Media requested authority to operate a Ku-band mobile satellite truck. Scripps-owned station KNXV-TV Phoenix plans to use the truck “to send program content and news features to its station in Phoenix” from various locations in the continental U.S., Scripps said in its application to the FCC International Bureau (http://xrl.us/bnw8j7).
SoftBank’s direct purchase of $8 billion in Sprint Nextel shares will allow the No. 3 U.S. carrier to acquire assets sooner than anticipated, New Street Research analyst Jonathan Chaplin said Wednesday in a note to investors. “We took a cursory look at four potential acquisitions and conclude that the market is pricing in the worst case scenario, an acquisition of Clearwire, while giving the company no credit for the value that Clearwire’s spectrum will bring,” Chaplin said in the note. “As such, we see little downside if this deal is announced and significant upside if Sprint actually manages to create value with the $8BN in new cash they have taken in.” New Street looked at the potential implications of four possible Sprint acquisitions -- a purchase of MetroPCS’s H-Block spectrum and potential purchases of Clearwire, MetroPCS and T-Mobile. All four have a long-term upside for the company, Chaplin said. “The SoftBank investment paves the way for Sprint to start the consolidation process sooner than we had previously expected,” he said. “We don’t know which asset Sprint will pursue first (although we have suspicions); however, we think Sprint will likely create significant value through consolidation over the next several years. In addition to consolidation, SoftBank could also help Sprint improve margins beyond what they will likely achieve with Network Vision.” The $8 billion is part of SoftBank’s total $20.1 billion investment in Sprint Nextel, which will give SoftBank a 70 percent ownership of the U.S. carrier (CD Oct 16 p1).
The United Church of Christ, Prometheus Radio Project and several individuals in religious entities urged the FCC to ensure that new low power radio stations will transmit a minimum of locally originated programming. Prometheus, UCC and about 250 people jointly filed a letter in docket 99-25, which is centered around creating a low-power radio service as part of the Local Community Radio Act (http://xrl.us/bnw8dr). Prometheus and the religious community supported the LCRA because they want to start radio stations, “and listen to radio stations, that contain local programming responsive to the communities they serve,” they said. “We are dismayed that some low power radio stations could get a precious license and not carry any locally-originated programming.”
NTIA bumped back the deadline for Broadband Technology Opportunities Program grantees’ quarterly reports. Their third-quarter reports were initially due Oct. 10 and slated for online posting Tuesday, according to NTIA’s 14th BTOP report from September (http://xrl.us/bnw76m). But these deadlines have changed. The reports were actually due to NTIA Oct. 30, but due to Hurricane Sandy, impacted grantees received a seven-day extension, a spokeswoman told us. The 233 BTOP grantee reports are now scheduled to be posted online Nov. 30, she said.