dailywireless.org » The OTHER Public Safety Band

The OTHER Public Safety Band

Enough already about 700 MHz.

Wall Street Journal examines Nextel’s progress in the other public safety band — the 800 MHz band. Nextel is moving their commercial frequencies out of the public-safety band and re-establishing them on the PCS band — but progress is too slow for many public service users.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin addressed APCO’s annual conference today (pdf):

“Like you, my first choice would have been to dedicate a network exclusively for the use of public safety. However, the reality is that there currently is not enough funding. The use of a public safety-private partnership, however, creates an opportunity to provide state-of-the-art technologies to you in a timely and affordable manner.
The adoption of a National Public Safety Broadband Licensee to be a part of this partnership is also the best way to establish a truly national interoperable network. It will facilitate a unified approach to the use of this spectrum, enabling all public safety users across the country to talk to each other during a crisis”.

The Nextel interference problem started when Nextel was allowed to expand into cellular service. Nextel previously served taxis and other dispatch services using hill-top, community towers. Then the FCC authorized Nextel to enter commercial cellular service, using multiple neighborhood antennas. But Nextel frequencies adjoin public service frequencies, unlike cellular frequencies. As Nextel built out cell towers, nearby, low-power police radios were drown out. The FCC said it wouldn’t be a problem.

They were wrong.

As part of its 2004 agreement with the FCC , Nextel promised to pay at least $4.86 billion to move out and move to clear channels at 800MHz and 1.9GHz, completing the job in three years. But many of the negotiations between Sprint Nextel and local authorities have landed in protracted mediation while interference has continued.

Under the Consensus Plan agreed to in 2004, public service agencies will gain use of the 700 and 800 Mhz bands currently operated by Nextel that were causing interference:

Nextel would exchange 16 megahertz of spectrum spread around the 700 MHz, 800 MHz and 900 MHz bands for 6 megahertz in the 800 MHz band and 10 megahertz in the 1.9 GHz band.
Nextel will then have 16 megahertz of contiguous spectrum in the 800 MHz band, on which the carrier could continue to offer its voice service, and 10 megahertz in the 1.9 GHz (PCS) band to offer “3G” services in the future.
Nextel would then have a total of 26MHz, about what it had before the move, but allocated differently to avoid interference and consolidate their spectrum bands in 800 Mhz and 1.9Mhz.

Nextel is now consolidating everything into one block of 800 MHz and one block of 1.9GHz frequencies. Nextel agreed to give the Treasury $4.8 billion (for no additional spectrum), less $2.5 billion for their estimated moving costs. Nextel is now shifting their current interfering frequencies to clear contiguous blocks at 800MHz and 1.9 GHz.

But 1.9GHz is currently used by television broadcasters for live microwave links. So Nextel agreed to pay all costs associated with corporate media’s “rebanding of 2 GHz“. Broadcasters pay nothing for their new gear or microwave frequencies.

The frequency move is not going well, says the Wall Street Journal:

The FCC is stepping up the pressure on Sprint Nextel, the company whose signals are causing the most interference.

The Warning: The FCC is pushing Sprint Nextel Corp. to put an end to the disruption that its wireless system causes in emergency radio communications because its broadcast spectrum is interwoven with one used by police and firefighters.

The Deal: The company agreed in 2004 to pay to move its service and public-safety agencies to separate channels, and was awarded 10 megahertz of coveted spectrum as an incentive.

What’s Next: With political pressure rising, the FCC says it may dictate a solution if the company doesn’t pick up the pace.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin warns that he wants to see progress soon, or the FCC will dictate a remedy. Sprint Nextel concedes it is taking longer than anticipated to solve the problem and attributes the delay to its efforts to do it as economically as possible.

All sides acknowledge they hadn’t anticipated just how difficult making changes would be. Public-safety networks, unlike commercial networks, can’t be taken offline for repairs. “People’s lives are hanging on this,” said Steve Proctor, executive director of the Utah Communications Agency Network, which is supervising the channel switch in his state. “You’re having to redesign and rebuild the airplane while it’s still flying.”

Motorola claims that M/A-Com’s “Open Sky” platform for Project 25 radios does not work properly with their P-25 infrastructure. M/A-Com makes similar claims.

Some believe the $10B Integrated Wireless Network (IWN), to build thousands of 700 MHz towers in every community in the nation for federal law enforcement agencies, may have played a roll.

Instead of spending $10 billion and the better part of a decade to build out an obsolete Project 25 radio network, some argued, the Feds might save time and money by buying Nextel’s push-to-talk iDEN network — outright. Most federal agents already carry Nextel phones. Commercial users, then, could be moved to Sprint’s CDMA PTT cellular frequencies — or go with Mobile WiMAX. Meanwhile, Cyren Call could offer a public service broadband solution — on 700 MHz. Then offer a dual-band PTT voice and broadband data service.

Wishful thinking, it turns out.

Congress wasn’t willing to hand over 30 MHz to Cyren Call. Now Verizon owns the IWN federal contract for telephony towers in every city and they smell a “walled garden” at 700MHz. A gold-plated, 24 carat jewel that comes complete with RUS subsidies, thanks to the FCC.

The April, 2007 GAO Report, First Responders: Much Work Remains to Improve Communications Interoperability (above) was fairly critical of current progress.

In related news, Cisco announced its support of the public safety Project 25 radios in collaboration with EADS and Raytheon JPS this week. The Cisco IP Interoperability and Collaboration System (IPICS) can be deployed in mobile command vehicles, connecting to wired, wireless, or satellite networks, IP or non-IP. Cisco IPICS provides interoperable communications between disparate P25 and non-P25 radio networks using IP technology and can connect to any authorized client device that supports voice. Here’s Voice Interoperability In Action (Cisco video).