Battle erupts over plans for the D-block and public safety

A battle has erupted over the future of the D-block of 700 MHz spectrum and what role that block may or may not play in supporting a nationwide broadband wireless public safety network.

On one side is the FCC, which wants to auction the D-block with certain conditions while advising Congress to raise funding to help build a public safety network in a different part of the 700 MHz band already in the hands of public safety and allocated for broadband use. On the other side is the public safety community, which says it needs the D-block in addition to its current holdings to support a dedicated network. Supporting the public safety community are several legislators who have introduced House of Representatives Bill 5081, which would grant the D-block outright to public safety.

According to a document issued by the FCC on Friday, the cost to build the public safety network would be $16 billion if the public safety community were to build the network on its own. But if a commercial operator were to offer service in the D-block and give public safety priority access to the network in emergency conditions, the FCC said some construction costs could be shared, reducing the cost to build the public safety network in its current band to $6.5 billion.

The problem with the FCC’s plan is that public safety’s current spectrum holdings are not sufficient, Public Safety Spectrum Trust Chairman Harlan McEwen told Connected Planet. The PSST is the non-profit group that holds the licenses for the public safety community’s current 700 MHz spectrum.

“If you don’t have enough public safety dedicated spectrum, we’ll be infringing [on the commercial operator] so often that it will be a burden to them and their customers,” McEwen said.

Influential wireless consultant Andrew Seybold, founder of the organization that bears his name, believes the FCC’s plan to give public safety priority access to the D-block is flawed because access would not be on a pre-emptive basis. In an emergency, consumers often turn to their wireless devices to contact loved ones, and network operators will not want to cut off those communications, Seybold said. He estimates that if public safety is not granted additional spectrum, public safety users will need additional capacity on a daily basis in major metropolitan areas, creating network contention and capacity concerns.

Similar concerns may be one of the things that lead to the failure of the first D-block auction in 2008. At that time, the government attempted to auction the D-block to a commercial network operator with the requirement that the commercial operator use the D-block, in combination with the PSST holdings, to build a hybrid network to be shared with the public safety community. The commercial operator also was expected to bear all network construction costs.