A county executive in the San Francisco Bay Area last week asked a U.S. Department of Commerce official to investigate the $50.6 million broadband stimulus grant awarded to Motorola to fund the deployment of the 700 MHz LTE wireless broadband network for first responders in the region, reports Urgent Communications.
In a letter to Inspector General Todd Zinser, Santa Clara County Executive Jeff Smith stated that an “investigation is warranted and necessary in order to ensure that public funds are administered in a transparent and fair manner at all levels of government,” asserting that the grant was “secured in a manner that lacked transparency and prudence.”
Smith reiterated that the decision to team with Motorola in a public/private partnership was never voted upon by legal representatives of the government entities involved.
The California Emergency Management Agency (Cal EMA) determined that the procedure used was adequate, but Smith and San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed have indicated that some key facts may have been misrepresented.
“Whatever [the San Francisco Bay Area Urban Area Region] is, we don’t yet know,” said San José mayor Chuck Reed. “I do know what the Bay Area Urban Area Security Initiative is, because we’re a member of that.”
“Sheriff Ahern was not in a position to make the kind of representations that he made about the public-private partnership,” said Emily Harrison, deputy county executive for Santa Clara County.
In addition to securing the $50.6 million grant, Motorola also agreed to pay a 30% match. Many industry observers question whether the 700 MHz network in the Bay Area can be funded without the almost $70 million in committed capital.
County Exec Smith contends that government entities in the region have not received adequate information about their financial obligations if they opt to participate in the broadband initiative.
Motorola is pushing over-the-air LTE on the public safety swath of 700MHz spectrum, very roughly near the old tv channels 63 and 68. The other half of those four tv channels in the 700 MHz band would be for narrowband communications.
Motorola, like most Police and Fire departments, also want the Federal government to give them an additional 10 MHz in the adjoining 700 MHz “D block”, something the FCC and the 911 commission are not willing to do.
The FCC argues that auctioning off the D Block, in a joint public/private use agreement, would lower costs while providing better coverage for everyone.
On May 27th, the Technology and Innovation Subcommittee reviewed the status of interoperability for public safety communications that enable interoperability from multiple agencies. The hearing discussed the status of the technical standards for public safety land mobile radio (LMR) systems.
According to Chairman David Wu:
While there has been a lot of progress on the P25 standards since 1989, the entire set of standards remains incomplete. I would like to understand the implications of this for public safety agencies procuring systems sold as “P25 compliant” and get a better sense of when we realistically can expect all of the standards to be completed.
Related Dailywireless articles include; SF Public Service Net: In Trouble?, SF Announces LTE First Responder Net, Riot in D Block, Why Cops Don’t Just Use Cell Phones, SF Announces LTE First Responder Net, LightSquared + SK Telecom, The 700MHz Network: Who Pays?, Public Safety Spectrum Grab, Public Safety: Show Us The Money, SF Announces LTE First Responder Net, Clearwire to Test LTE, Apps for the City, LightSquared: 5K Basestations by 2011, Phoney Spectrum Scarcity, D-Block: It’s Done; Congress Pays, The 700MHz Network: Who Pays?, Big Bucks for 700 MHz Public Safety, FCC: Stop Complaining about Interoperability, Police & Fire: No Broadband for You, Commentary: Future of Public Safety Communications, New York Cancels Statewide Wireless Network, New York’s $2B Statewide Network Close to Canceling, M/A-COM to NY: We’re Good, NY Gives Tyco 45 days to Fix Network, Battle for Oregon’s State-wide Radio Net, Twitter 911, FCC Okays 21 Public Service Nets,
