CTIA SEEKS MORE SPECTRUM TO MEET PRIORITY ACCESS DEMANDS

Panel that included Wheeler, former FCC Chmn. Reed Hundt and Assn. of Public-Safety Communications Officials- International (APCO) counsel Robert Gurss focused on public safety spectrum needs that remained unmet for additional capacity, interoperability, advanced services. On PAS spectrum issue, Hundt said larger issue was govt.’s making enough spectrum available. Without that, “many more people will be preempted” from network to make way for priority users and be unable to complete cellphone calls in emergency, he said. Wheeler and Hundt called on govt. to set aside 10 MHz for dedicated public safety use.

“Government came to us and said we need guaranteed access to your spectrum,” Wheeler said, and carriers have been in discussions with National Communications System (NCS) on voluntarily setting aside capacity for priority users in emergencies. “It’s also incumbent on the government to do the right thing to deal with the consumer consequences of this by getting on with the allocation of additional spectrum,” he said. Wheeler ran through what he described as govt. machinations that had held up total of 120 MHz that industry had said needed to be set aside for advanced wireless uses. First “tranche” when spectrum is freed up for 3G and other uses should go toward replacing spectrum that govt. essentially is borrowing for PAS uses in emergencies, he said. “Then let’s continue to expand that capacity over time for both consumers and the federal government. We need to break loose the spectrum to do that.”

Hundt, now senior adviser for McKinsey & Co., said public safety spectrum crunch had been “chronic” problem that predated attention that Sept. 11 terrorist attacks focused on issue. “We currently have the most inefficient possible [spectrum] structure for public safety,” he said: “We don’t have ample spectrum cleared out for this particular purpose. We don’t have ample spectrum for commercial purposes.” Leadership “can and should come from the FCC,” he said. Hundt said he saw need for 3 things to be done for public safety community: (1) All public safety community members in U.S., including fire, police and emergency govt. workers at all levels, should have packetized, digital, robust, secure, nondegradable network. Average public safety user now is relying on analog technology, compared with 80% digital penetration of commercial cellular subscribers, he said. “All that is absolutely possible, it’s not pie in the sky,” he said of robust, digital network for public safety.

(2) Public safety users should have robust network that could find people anytime and anywhere. One possibility is system in which visitors and employees in office building would have badges with chipsets that could tell local area network where wearer was located. “It is absolutely in the art of the possible for this technology to be installed in a high rise or anywhere in the world,” Hundt said. Under location systems using chip technology, emergency personnel could have tracked down location of every laptop in World Trade Center and issued instructions to tell people where to go, he said. (3) Public safety users could be given “apprehension capability.” Hundt said such systems could consist of media-rich capabilities to issue information such as physical appearances and license plate numbers of wanted individuals, using infrastructure that would communicate alerts across all public safety agencies.

APCO'S Gurss said solving capacity needs of public safety users was question of both money and spectrum. Serious capacity problems remain in many metro areas in which agencies that have hundreds of users still are sharing one channel: “That’s not the way it’s supposed to work.” He reiterated concerns of APCO and others in public safety community that 24 MHz set aside in 700 MHz band for public safety wouldn’t be usable until analog broadcasters vacated spectrum as part of DTV transition. “We don’t know when that’s going to happen and that uncertainty alone is a major problem,” he said. “There are cities and counties around the country who would like to use that spectrum, who would like to start raising the money but don’t know when it’s going to be available and are very reluctant to go down that path of allocating the money.” On PAS issue, Gurss said system tended to be skewed somewhat toward making spectrum available to federal agencies and others that aren’t necessarily first to respond to scene. While PAS will guarantee spectrum is available first to highest-priority users, some public safety operators that will have lower priority ranking are likely to arrive hours or days ahead of other users, he said.

Responding to Wheeler suggestion that cellular topology might be helpful for public safety users, Gurss said public safety community might not have enough users to make that type of system cost-effective. However, he said, one trend may be changing that in some areas. In some cases, public safety users are constructing larger networks that pull together what had been separate radio infrastructures of police, fire and other public safety agencies, he said. In such cases, user community may have enough volume to make cellular systems more usable, Gurss said.

Wheeler had noted that under cellular topology, public safety users might be able to use equipment more efficiently by being able to serve 500,000 users per MHz. Cost of that type of system is about $700 per subscriber for infrastructure and $300 per subscriber for handset. While he said 10 MHz wasn’t necessarily right figure, that amount of dedicated spectrum could “serve millions of users” and provide value-added services such as punch to dial, push to talk, prioritization among users. “It is time to think anew,” Wheeler said.