Proposed Rockefeller bill would give D-block to public safety

After an unsuccessful attempt to get something passed in the previous Congress, Senator Jay Rockefellet (D-WV) this week introduced new legislation to create a nationwide public safety network using prime spectrum in the 700 MHz D-block in combination with 700 MHz spectrum already in the hands of public safety. The move came within a day of the Federal Communications Commission adoption of guidelines for the proposed public safety network, including a requirement that the network use LTE technology.

The new legislation carries the same name that last year’s legislation did—Public Safety Spectrum and Wireless Innovation Act. And the new act is virtually identical to what failed to pass in the previous attempt, according to Andrew Seybold, president of the wireless-focused consulting firm with the same name. The reason the legislation didn’t pass previously, he said, is that legislators simply ran out of time. “I’m fairly confident this time of seeing it get approved,” said Seybold.

Funding and bandwidth requirements would be addressed

According to a summary posted on Rockefeller’s web site, the new legislation would call for proceeds from voluntary spectrum auctions to be used to fund construction of the new public safety network. In addition, the public safety community would be able to lease spectrum on its networks to other carriers on a pre-emptive basis. According to Seybold, that means commercial users would have no availability to that spectrum when pre-empted by public safety.

Rockefeller’s summary says that the legislation also directs the Federal Communications Commission to develop technical and operational standards to ensure “nationwide interoperability and build-out, including in rural areas.”

At least one rural carrier group, the Rural Cellular Association, has questioned whether the government would really be able to afford to build a public safety network throughout rural America.

The RCA has argued that the D-block should be auctioned to a commercial operator that would build a network in that band that could be shared by public safety users in rural areas. “Without true interoperability, a patchwork network is inevitable, which could leave public safety users without a signal in time of emergency, even where commercial LTE networks are present,” said RCA President and CEO Steven Berry in a statement issued this week.

Wireless carriers that have little or no spectrum in the highly prized 700 MHz block, including Sprint and T-Mobile, also have argued in favor of auctioning the D-block. Those carriers, along with the RCA, have argued that with so many fewer users than on commercial networks, public safety should have ample spectrum with its current holdings.

But the Public Safety Spectrum Trust, the license holder for public safety’s current spectrum holdings, has argued that its current holdings are not sufficient to support a mobile broadband wireless network.
Seybold defended that point of view. “What a lot of people don’t understand is that public safety events happen in small geographic areas,” he said. Many such events happen within only one or two cellsite sectors, requiring a high amount of capacity for use by public safety within those sectors, he said.

What about rural America?

Seybold argued that the best solution for rural America would be for rural carriers and utility companies to partner with public safety to build a public safety network using both the current public safety spectrum holdings and the D-block. Utility companies, he noted, are very interested in obtaining advanced communications capabilities to support smart grid initiatives.

Under this scenario, potentially rural carriers’ cell towers could be shared by public safety, as could utility company rights-of-way. Rural carriers would then be able to lease capacity on the public safety network, Seybold said. The hitch is that such access could be pre-empted by public safety in the case of emergency. Seybold argued that such emergencies would be less frequent in rural areas than in metro areas.

The RCA, however, has also raised concerns about the cost of handsets and other devices for use on the public safety network. One of the reasons the RCA would like to see the D-block go to a commercial operator is that the costs of developing devices for use on the public safety network would be shared with the commercial operator and would benefit from economies of scale.

One thing Seybold and Berry agree on is that the D-block and the 700 MHz spectrum already held by public safety are adjacent to one another and both bands could easily be accommodated with a single chipset design. But if both spectrum bands go to public safety, devices developed for use on that network would not see the same economies of scale that they would if a carrier such as T-Mobile or Sprint were also using the spectrum.

“What do you do in a rural area when many public safety users are volunteers?” Berry recently asked in an interview with Connected Planet. “How are you going to make sure they have communications? Are you going to buy everyone a unique phone for $5,000 or $6,000?”

Seybold said he had hoped that the new version of the public safety network legislation would recognize that concern by including a plan to help fund the development of chipsets for devices for use on the public safety network. But he said he believes the bill was deliberately re-introduced without changes so that it would retain all of its previous sponsors. He believes there is still a possibility that a funding plan for chipsets could still be added to the bill. Even if that does not happen, he argued that economies of scale may be better than they might initially appear because currently communications devices are issued on a squad car basis but in the future, all public safety users would have their own devices.