Public safety spectrum, here we go again
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Better late than never, here are my thoughts on the FCC’s auction for the D Block public safety band. There was only one bid for the block, Frontline Wireless to shut down, and some are even suggesting improprieties. Sadly, we’ve got a long way to go before we have an operating public safety network. Why did the D Block auction fail? I think at root the problem is that the FCC simply placed too many restrictions on the would-be licensee, and that’s something the FCC should keep in mind as it considers what to do next.
Under the D Block’s service rules the commercial licensee must come to an agreement with the Public Safety Spectrum Trust (which is the licensee for the adjacent public safety spectrum) about the details of the network to be built. If it doesn’t come to an agreement, the FCC can impose whatever requirements it sees fit on the licensee, and if the licensee surrenders its license or has it taken away, they must pay a forfeiture penalty that can run into the millions. Because there are no similar penalties for the non-profit PSST to come to agreement, this allows the PSST to basically dictate the terms of the network. Why would anyone bid for the privilege to be a part of that deal?
Sadly, Chairman Martin doesn’t seem to get this. He recently lamented the fate of the D Block:
“Did we get everything perfect in it? Obviously not because no one was willing to end up taking on that burden,” Martin conceded. “So, do I wish that someone was willing to take on that burden? Yes. And do we need to restructure it in such a way that someone is willing to take on that burden? Absolutely. But absent somebody else coming up with some idea to solve this, this is the only way to solve what’s really a public-safety crisis.”
Instead of expecting some selfless corporation to “take on the burden” of such a thankless deal, why not try instead to create a license aligned with the interests of both the private sector (profit) and public safety (cheap and interoperable communications solutions)? Here’s my recipe:
- Get rid of the PSST, a bureaucracy more than prone to capture that will do nothing but hold a commercial licensee hostage.
- Take the spectrum now held by the PSST and combine it with the D Block. Create two national licenses on the combined spectrum so as to inject competition and avoid a monopoly provider.
- Place public safety obligations on each of those licenses but allow the licensees to lease excess capacity. What sort of obligations? Obviously public safety should have priority, and leased access would only be secondary. Beyond that, the FCC could include minimum performance standards in the licenses to ensure that the networks are built to public safety standards without having to prescribe specific technologies or methods.
- Auction the licenses without reserve prices.
There are no doubt more than a few hurdles for such a plan to overcome, but I think it makes sense to allow market forces develop public safety networks. I’d love to hear any critiques of this idea. No doubt I’ll be submitting a comment to the inevitable rulemaking on this issue and it would help me to figure out the weaknesses of this scheme.
Public safety spectrum update: Revenge of Cyren Call
In my comments to the FCC in the 700 MHz proceeding, I addressed the Commission’s insistence that the licensee of a national public safety spectrum licensee be a non-profit entity. At the time I said,This is odd since there are several commercial communications companies with the comparative advantage and expertise in designing, building-out, and maintaining wireless broadband networks. A for-profit mission and quality service to first responders should not be considered mutually exclusive ideals.
The Commission’s 312-page final order (PDF) cited my comment, but sadly as an example of the sort of proposal they weren’t going to adopt. Instead, they decided that they would create a license for 10 MHz of public safety spectrum (worth billions) and give it to a Public Safety Broadband Licensee. And who is the Public Safety Broadband Licensee? They have no idea, but in the Order they lay out the requirements for any entity who wishes to apply to be the Public Safety Broadband Licensee. These include,
- No commercial interest may be held in the licensee, nor may any commercial interest participate in the management of the licensee
- The entity must be non-profit
- The entity must be “broadly representative of the public safety radio user community”
Well, applications to be the Public Safety Broadband Licensee are due this Wednesday, and so far there’s only one applicant, an organization called the Public Safety Spectrum Trust Corporation (sorry, no website). If they are chosen as the Licensee, the PSST will help set the public safety requirements any bidder will have to satisfy in order to purchase the commercial-public safety shared D Block that will be auctioned in January. (Frontline has committed to bid, while Verizon has also shown an interest.) So who makes up the PSST? According to their recent press release,
The PSST Board of Directors is comprised of representatives of the following organizations: the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO); the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials-International (APCO); the Forestry Conservation Communications Association (FCCA); the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP); the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC); the International Municipal Signal Association (IMSA); the National Association of State Emergency Medical Services Officials (NASEMSO); the National Emergency Number Association (NENA); and the National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA).
That is, the lobbying groups for public safety. This is the first time I’ve ever heard of the lobbyists themselves potentially getting a license. Also, these groups supported the Cyren Call plan last year to reallocate spectrum from commercial to public safety use. Guess who they chose last week to be their “Public Safety Advisor“?
A quick response to Cyren Call & Frontline
In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Cyren Call Chairman Morgan O’Brien and Frontline Wireless Chairman Janice Obuchowski each had a letter to the editor responding to my March 13th op-ed about first responder communications. I’d like to take up just a few sentences to respond.O’Brien writes that I “audaciously misrepresent[ed]” Cyren Call’s proposal, but does not point out what that misrepresentation was. So, I can’t answer. Obuchoski, on the other hand, does point out a misstatement about Frontline’s plan. She writes,
[Brito] misstates that the plan would build “an interoperable network over spectrum purchased at auction; but Frontline wants the FCC to restrict that spectrum to public safety use.” Frontline will offer commercial service in the spectrum won at auction and provide public safety with pre-emptible access during emergencies to this commercial spectrum to provide additional capacity during peak periods of crisis when first responders’ communications requirements spike. This spectrum would remain in commercial use at all other times.
The thing is, I have always fully understood that the Frontline proposal would share he spectrum with public safety and commercial users. The error was introduced by a WSJ edit made after the last version of the op-ed that I approved the evening before it was published. (I don’t blame the WSJ; they were probably just editing for length or style.) Continue reading this post »
My op-ed quoted on the Hill
Yesterday all five FCC commissioners went before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Telecom and the Internet for an oversight hearing. Here’s the AP’s account. During the hearing, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Ca.) introduced into the record my op-ed published on Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal and she read from it to the Commissioners. Here’s the video:It’s really great to see the hard work you put into something maybe having an effect on policy.
Me in the WSJ: Failure to communicate
I promise to talk about something different soon, but for now let me plug my op-ed in The Wall Street Journal today about first responder communications. You can read it here (no subscription required). The gist:Offer Cyren Call, Frontline and others the opportunity to bid on spectrum already restricted to public safety use. That would allow firms to build national interoperable networks without affecting how much spectrum will be available for commercial use. At the very least, if spectrum now slated for commercial auction must be used, the government should identify an equal amount of existing public safety spectrum that can be auctioned commercially once the new public safety networks are built.
Whatever path we take, we should ensure that at least two competing networks are built. This works well for wireless services such as cell phones; subscribers to one service have no trouble speaking to subscribers on another while prices are kept low.
A private-sector national network for public safety first responders is not an untested idea. In the U.K., the national network that supports police, fire and over a hundred other public safety services is owned and operated by O2, a private firm. We can do even better, using competition to spur the innovations that monopoly rarely provides.
Giving McCain benefit of doubt on public safety spectrum
I got my hands on the new public safety communications bill that John McCain introduced last Thursday, but which is not yet available on the web. Unlike what has been reported here and elsewhere, McCain’s bill isn’t a straight-up implementation of the Cyren Call plan. With some trepidation, I say there’s actually quite a bit to like.
McCain’s bill does take 30 MHz now slated for commercial auction and designate it for public safety, which in my book is a bad idea because public safety already has plenty of spectrum, and consumers would forgo the benefits of new commercially available spectrum. But here’s what he does: he sets up a “working group” of first responder and government representatives who will write a report to the FCC outlining what an ideal public-private interoperable network on the 30 MHz would look like. The FCC is then authorized to auction the 30 MHz as long as all the bidders agree to use the spectrum to provide a network that matches the report’s specifications. In some ways this is a lot like the Frontline Wireless proposal. If there is no bidder, however, then the Cyren Call plan kicks in and a Public Safety Broadband Trust Corporation, established by the bill, can buy the spectrum using FCC loan guarantees.
So what’s to like? Well, what there is to like is in the first part of the bill assuming the Cyren Call contingency doesn’t kick in. Continue reading this post »
Frontline Wireless joins the interoperability party
Yesterday I filed a public interest comment (PDF) in the FCC’s proceeding to create a national public safety broadband network in the 700 MHz band. Not coincidentally, so did Frontline Wireless, a new company started by former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt and former NTIA Administrator Janice Obuchowski among others. In their filing they propose a new plan to build a national wireless broadband network to be shared by public safety and consumers. This plan comes closer to the commercial provision of public safety communications that I’ve been suggesting, but it’s still a bit off. Below I’ll talk about the plan, but first some background.
As I’ve explained before, the digital TV transition frees up 84 MHz of spectrum. Congress has allocated 24 to public safety and 60 for auction. Morgan O’Brien’s Cyren Call asked the FCC to allocate additional spectrum to public safety for a national network by removing a 30 MHz block of spectrum from auction. The FCC denied the petition saying, quite rightly, that they didn’t have the authority not to auction off the spectrum Congress told them they had to. Cyren Call has since found a sponsor in John McCain who has said he will introduce a bill that would remove the 30 MHz from auction and give it to a “public safety broadband trust.”
The FCC’s current proceeding centers on what to do with the 24 MHz of spectrum that Congress did allocate to public safety. Specifically, the FCC asked for comment on its plan to take 12 MHz of this spectrum and license it to a nonprofit representing the public safety community that would in turn build a national broadband network, charge first responders a fee for service, and lease excess capacity on the network to commercial customers. Continue reading this post »
What congress can do about interoperability
Yesterday I explained that in my view first responders don’t need more spectrum to address their interoperability problem, but instead a different approach to using the spectrum they already have. So if Congress shouldn’t allocate more spectrum for public safety, what should it do to address the problem?Cyren Call is absolutely right about a lot of things: That we should opt for national networks, rather than 50,000 individual and incompatible radio systems for each locality or agency. That everyone benefits when public safety spectrum is shared with commercial users (as long as first responders have priority). That given the opportunity, the private sector will build public safety networks that first responders can subscribe to. Where Cyren Call goes wrong is in insisting that we need new spectrum to achieve this.
What Congress can do is very simple. Open up spectrum already allocated for public safety and allow private companies to build networks on that spectrum. Allow the FCC to assign spectrum allocated for public safety to commercial carriers (like Verizon or Cyren Call or whoever) directly. Require in the licenses1 that the carrier build a network up to public safety specs. Allow the carriers to sell excess capacity to commercial users, but ensure that first responders have priority. Voila, commercial provision of public safety communications. Don’t want to stop there? There’s more Congress can do. Continue reading this post »
Public safety doesn’t need more spectrum
Ahead of tomorrow’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing on public safety communications, the Consumer Electronics Association released a report (PDF) it commissioned from Criterion Economics analyzing the Cyren Call plan. The report concludes that the Cyren Call plan would upturn Congress’s carefully crafted DTV transition scheme. It also calls into question whether the private sector would build a more expensive broadband network than it would otherwise have to in order to meet the more rigorous needs of public safety.Like I said, the study was commissioned by a special interest and it should be read in that light. (And by all means, read it yourself and make up your own mind.) However, the study does outline some basic facts that support something I’ve been saying for a long time: public safety communications does not need more spectrum, what it needs is spectrum reform. Here’s a sampling from the report: Continue reading this post »
McCain signs on to Cyren Call plan
I’ve written on this blog before about Cyren Call, Nextel founder Morgan O’Brien’s venture to create a national wireless broadband network for first responders. Its plan calls for 30 MHz of spectrum in the 700 MHz band that are slated for auction. A couple of months ago the FCC turned down Cyren Call’s petition, saying Congress’s instructions were quite clear and the Commission didn’t have the authority to refuse to auction the spectrum. Morgan O’Brien spoke at the symposium we held late last year and hinted that he was already working on getting Congress to approve his plan. (Video here.)Well, today comes word that John McCain has signed on to the Cyren Call plan. This is especially newsworthy since the Senate will soon take a look at the recently passed House bill to implement the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations. As I explained earlier today, that bill addresses first responder communications, but doesn’t mention new spectrum for public safety. McCain said he plans to introduce legislation in the near future to assign the 30 MHz to the Public Safety Broadband Trust the Cyren Call plan calls for. I’m not convinced you need 30 MHz of spectrum to create a viable network, and so I’m not sure it’s time to remove spectrum from efficient allocation by auctions. Verizon hinted a while back that they could do it in just 12 MHz of the 24 already slated for public safety, and the FCC is currently taking comments in a proceeding to create just such a network in 12 MHz. Comments are due on Feb. 26. Note to Verizon: Now would be a fine time to make details of your plan public.
The other problem I see is that the Cyren Call/McCain plan would create one monopoly provider. The FCC plan has the same problem. If it can be done in 12 MHz, why not create two competing networks in the 24 MHz of spectrum already allocated for public safety?
On interoperability, is it worth implementing the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation?
Implementing the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations was the House Democrat’s top priority during their recent “first 100 hours” legislative spree. One of the recommendations addressed in the resulting H.R. 1 bill had to do with public safety communications interoperability. The 9/11 Commission found that communications between firefighters, police officers, and other emergency personnel failed that day with deadly consequences. Here is a quick analysis of H.R. 1’s interoperability provisions, as well as the Commission’s recommendation itself, in which I argue that they are both overlooking the fundamental causes of the interoperability problem.Continue reading this post »
Chertoff: We’ll have the 25-year-old interoperability problem fixed by next year
According to Congress Daily, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff “said today his department will ensure that the highest-risk urban areas have interoperable [public safety] communications equipment by the end of next year, and that all states have it by the end of 2008.” DHS has been under pressure from the incoming Democratic majority to do something about the lack of communications among first responders. According to the article,Without explicitly acknowledging the looming pressure for faster action, Chertoff told a conference of emergency response officials that metropolitan regions under his department’s Urban Areas Security Initiative grant program will have interoperable communications by the end of the 2007 calendar year, followed by all states by the end of 2008.
Chertoff said the department will give urban locations “interoperability scorecards” next month to help them decide how much money to seek in their upcoming grant applications. He did not provide additional details during his speech.
A Homeland Security Department aide would only add: “We will have further info at later date, as well as further info on the grant guidance.”
The whole speech is here, but it doesn’t really add much. I’m not sure what to make of this, but if the interoperability problem could be solved so simply, by just giving more money in federal grants to states and localities, then we would have fixed it a long time ago. As the Katrina Commission pointed out in its report, “Although some New Orleans and Louisiana state officials attribute the lack of true interoperability for first responders in the region to financial limitations, this explanation flies in the face of the massive amounts of federal grants to Louisiana.” Among other things, the interoperability problem is caused by a collective action problem, which in turn is cause by a spectrum policy that gives each of 50,000 public safety agencies their own (untradable) spectrum license and thus the impetus to build their own custom radio system. Coordination among these 50,000 actors is not easy, and I don’t see how more money will help.
Luckily, the Mercatus Center and Tom Hazlett’s Tech Center at GMU are putting on a symposium along with the FCLJ that will try to offer some solutions for the interoperability issue on Friday, Dec. 8. You’re intvited. Presenting papers on the topic will be Gerald Faulhaber, Jon Peha, Phil Weiser, and yours truly.
Cross-posted at TLF. You can leave and read comments there. →
FCC turns down Cyren Call
Yesterday the FCC did something a little weird. One week after putting up for public comment Cyren Call’s proposal to revamp public safety communications, it rejected the petition but also decided to keep the commenting open. Quite admirably, the Commission cites lack of authority from Congress. What’s weird is that they didn’t decide to reject the petition during the three months they sat on it before putting out for comment. Also weird are the post-decision comments, which will now have another audience: Congress.In the new issue of Regulation magazine I explain the depth of the public safety interoperability problem and how we might go about tackling it.
In some parts of Europe, private enterprise builds and maintains the public safety network and sells interoperable communications capacity to the agencies there. A similar approach could be pursued in the United States. The government could allow private carriers to build advanced networks on frequencies that it now restricts to public safety use. Instead of building their own incompatible and duplicative networks, agencies and jurisdiction could purchase their communications needs from the private carriers. Because public safety communications typically use very little communications capacity, the carriers could sell space on the network to private entities without interfering with emergency communications.
This a warm-up to a paper I’m writing for FCLJ symposium on public safety interoperability that the Mercatus Center and GMU’s Tech Center are co-sponsoring. The event will take place Dec. 8 at GMU School of Law. Cyren Call’s Morgan O’Brien will be one of the panelists. Event details here.
Cross-posted at TLF. You can leave and read comments there. →
Public safety communications interoperability
I have an article in the new issue of Regulation magazine on public safety communications interoperability. Many folks are surprised to find out that police, firefighters, EMS, federal agencies, and the rest can’t communicate seamlessly through their radios. In fact, they have a very difficult time communicating. I look at some of the causes and suggest that one solution could be for first responders to buy their communications solutions on the open market (like they buy guns and cars and everything else) instead of building their own systems. I have a paper on this coming out in a couple of months in the FCLJ. It’s part of a symposium Mercatus is co-sponsoring with GMU’s Tech Center.-
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This is the personal site of Jerry Brito, a lawyer and writer in Washington, D.C. He’s an academic researcher and the creator of Unclutterer and several other blogs. More »
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