The Federal Communications Commission recently proposed in the National Broadband Plan that a critical band of spectrum called the D Block be sold at auction for commercial purposes instead of being allocated to public safety. Public safety needs the D Block. This measure, which is the most important issue law enforcement, fire, and EMS officials have faced in decades, is under consideration by Congress now.
With advances in technology, public safety has identified an increasing need to access data and video networks during all emergency incidents. Law enforcement needs access to streaming video, surveillance networks capable of identifying known terrorists through the use of video analytics, criminal records, automated license plate recognition and biometric technologies including mobile fingerprint and iris identification to prevent and respond to criminal activities. Fire services needs access to building blue prints, health-monitoring sensors and GPS tracking systems in order to save lives. Emergency medical services needs access to telemedicine, high-resolution video and patient records to reduce the time it takes to deliver medical services at the scene of a incident such as a car crash on a highway. Critical-infrastructure service providers need to be able to coordinate their responses to restore power and telecommunications services during large-scale incidents. Federal government operations, including the U.S. Marshals Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Customs Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Homeland Security and various other federal agencies need to access data networks during large-scale incidents to coordinate Federal assistance with State and local response and recovery operations.
Above are just a few of the applications and services that will need to exist on a public safety broadband network. Unfortunately, the hard-reality depends greatly on the amount of spectrum that is available for public safety broadband services. Many of the applications listed above require considerable bandwidth and speed.
The Public Safety Alliance is asking the Obama Administration, Congress, the Federal Communications Commission, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Commerce and the Department of Justice to work together to develop the appropriate spectrum and funding policy that will enable local, State and Tribal governments to build out their next generation of interoperable public safety wireless broadband networks.
Basic Facts
The Risk to Your Communities
Thorough evaluations of the FCC plan by public safety agencies and industry officials have established that selling the D Block will leave public safety under-equipped to protect citizens, fight crime, respond to fires and medical emergencies and handle natural disasters and terrorism threats.
If the D Block is sold at commercial auction, citizens' and officers' lives will be endangered.
We know that when police, fire and EMS agencies cannot communicate effectively hundreds of lives are lost. This was a key lesson the nation learned on 9/11 and during Hurricane Katrina.
Selling the D Block will require public safety to rely on commercial networks for their broadband needs.
Public safety is too important to rely on commercial wireless networks, because everyone knows how often calls are dropped on a commercial networks, especially during a crisis, when commercial networks become overwhelmed by calls. For police, fire and EMS, a dropped call can mean life or death. Public safety is essential.
Historic Opportunity for a Solution that Works for Public Safety and Keeps America Safe
The FCC’s commitment to enabling a build-out of a nationwide, interoperable public safety wireless broadband network represents an historic opportunity to advance the services available to public safety for the 21st Century.
Public safety recommends that Congress stop the implementation of the FCC policy for auctioning the D Block. The interests of public safety and America are better served by assigning the D Block to public safety and provide the funding for public safety communications.
The commercial D Block should be joined with the Public Safety Broadband Licensee (PBSL) allocation and dedicated to public safety to enable capacity for 21st Century public safety broadband applications. This will ensure that interference and the resulting service holes are mitigated, full control and prioritization of broadband resources available to public safety response, and a free market environment for competitive commercial services is encouraged.