Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller is advocating that legislation that would reallocate the 700 MHz D Block to public safety and largely fund the deployment of a nationwide LTE network by the billions raised by auctioning off television frequencies, reports Urgent Magazine.
He reportedly wants the language in the bill — including D Block reallocation and $12 billion in funding to pay for the LTE network buildout — to be integrated into S.911 – the deficit-reduction legislation.
“The reason to attach it is because they pretty much know that a deficit-reduction bill has got to move,” said Sean Kirkendall, spokesman for the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO). Without being attached to deficit-reduction legislation, some Beltway sources question whether S.911 will be approved before the 9/11 anniversary. Most believe Senate passage is possible before the end of the month.
But Glenn Bischoff in Urgent Communications says the inevitabilty of legislation that gives the 700 MHz D Block to public safety for President Obama’s signature by Sept. 11, the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks is not a given… Such is the downside of a two-party political system, but the divide between Republicans and Democrats is particularly wide and deep at this juncture, according to Ilona Nickels, a political strategist and Washington insider.
Scarier still is what Nickels said later, which clearly gave me the uneasy feeling that this might not be the best time to try getting a bill through Congress that will cost the U.S. Treasury several billion dollars — which is what the D Block reallocation bill will do, because the spectrum won’t be allocated to commercial interests, as current law prescribes.
Nickels pointed out that this particular Congress is severely hampered by a lack of funds and the nation’s crushing debt, which stands at $14.5 trillion. “There’s simply no money to pay for new programs,” she said.
So, whether this legislation ever is enacted hinges, as most things do in Washington, on money. Can Congress be convinced that the $3 billion that a D Block auction theoretically would generate can be foregone? Can it be convinced to pony up $10 billion for the buildout of the network? And let’s be realistic, even if they do find the $10 billion, this network is going to cost a lot more than anyone currently thinks—it always does.
I was told that once the Obama administration came out in support of public safety receiving the D Block, it became a political football — something that is not necessarily in the best interests of public safety. The idea is that whatever the president wants, there are those in Congress committed to seeing that he doesn’t get it.
The future of the “D-Block” is a gamble, no matter what your politics. A dedicated, nationwide broadband system for first responders is needed. But it will serve nobody if it doesn’t get built due to lack of funding.
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Related stories on DailyWireless include; D-Block Gets a Hearing, National Wireless Initiative, White House: D-Block to Police/Fire, State of the Spectrum, FCC Green Lights Lightsquared, Charlie’s Big Play, Phoney Spectrum Crisis?, Oregon’s $600M Public Safety Network Likely Killed, Oregon’s Public Service Network: $100M Over Budget, Bay Area 700 MHz Net in Altercation , SF Announces LTE First Responder Net, New York Cancels Statewide Wireless Network, M/A-COM to NY: We’re Good, FCC: Interoperability on 700 MHz Band, Riot in D Block,AT&T Talks Up LTE AT&T Gets Heat on MediaFLO Spectrum, Combining AWS and 700 MHz: Why?, Cox Communciations: Out of Cellular Operations, Free Mobile Development for Cities & Governments, U.S. Wireless Growth, T-Mobile’s Secret Sauce: 2x10MHz, FCC Finalizes Rules on 700MHz: Limited Open Access, No Wholesale Requirement
