dailywireless.org » Cyren Call to Manage Public Safety Spectrum

Cyren Call to Manage Public Safety Spectrum

Cyren Call Communications will be the Public Safety Spectrum Trust Corporation’s primary liaison with commercial bidders of the 700MHz public safety spectrum (pdf).

PSST plans on becoming an agent to facilitate and coordinate all parties interested in bidding for the upper 700 MHz D Block license. At the moment, the PSST is not the national public-safety licensee, but it is the only organization to date that has expressed interest publicly in the position. Applications to fill the national licensee role are due to the FCC on Wednesday.

As part of the FCC’s 700 MHz decision, the upper 10 MHz, D Block license, will be combined with an additional 10 MHz of spectrum dedicated to a national Public Safety Broadband Licensee (PSBL). This public-private partnership would construct a shared network, providing non-priority wireless broadband services to commercial subscribers.

The “D” block/public service bands combine to make available 20 MHz of broadband capacity, similar to the 22 Mhz commercial capacity on the “C” block, which is the spectrum favored by Google and Verizon. The public service spectrum would be cheaper to buy, but more expensive to build, since it requires more stingent technical requirements, complete coverage, longer battery backup, and must be shared by public safety users.

Here’s the FCC’s 2nd Report and Order released Aug 10th (pdf). The FCC set benchmarks for D Block build-out of the public safety network. Signal coverage and service must be available to 75 percent of the population within four years, with 95 percent to be covered within seven years and 99.3 percent to be covered within 10 years.

Morgan O’Brien, Chairman of Cyren Call, said, “We encourage anyone interested in the D block to contact Cyren Call to discuss the merits of building this shared network. Between now and release of the PSST’s Statement of Requirements, we’d like to collect the thoughts and ideas of all interested bidding parties pertaining to the public safety network requirements. A healthy and robust auction will result from potential bidders gaining a clearer understanding of what will be entailed in building, operating and maintaining this shared network to standards that will meet Public Safety’s expressed needs.”

Many of the largest national public safety organizations created a new nonprofit corporation called the Public Safety Spectrum Trust (PSST), which will apply to the FCC to become the new National Public Safety Licensee. The PSST Board of Directors includes representatives of 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) and others.

Among the short-term goals for the PSST (pdf) will be the preparation of a Statement of Requirements (SOR) defining the public safety network for interested commercial partners. The SOR is planned to be released in advance of the 700 MHz auction short form application deadline.

The benefits of a shared public/private system on 700 MHz include:

Broadband data services (such as text messaging, photos, diagrams, and streaming video) currently unavailable in existing public safety land mobile systems
A hardened public safety network with infrastructure built to withstand local natural hazards (tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, etc.) that would include strengthened towers and backup power with fuel supplies to withstand long-term outages of public power sources
Nationwide roaming and interoperability for local, state, and federal public safety agencies (police, fire, and emergency medical services) and other emergency services such as transportation, health care, and utilities
Access to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) similar to current commercial cellular services
Push-to-talk, one-to-one, and one-to-many radio capabilities that would provide a backup to (but would not replace) traditional public safety land mobile mission-critical voice systems
Access to satellite services to provide reliable nationwide communications where terrestrial services either do not exist or are temporarily out of service

Cyren Call orginally pitched the idea of using the entire 30 MHz available on the Upper 700MHz band for shared public/private use, but Congress nixed that idea. Cutting out strictly commercial bids would have left too much money on the table. The 700MHz auction, due in late January, 2008, is expected to generate 10-$30 billion for the U.S. treasury.

Frontline Wireless is expected to be among the biders for the public safety band. Frontline promotes open access provisions in their shared network plan. The FCC more closely followed Frontline’s plan in their 700MHz order, adopting a more modest 10 Mhz bite out of the valuable 700 MHz spectrum.