700 MHz Spectrum Proposal Rocks Public Safety

Telecom Policy Report, May 1, 2006

An organization headed by a Nextel co-founder late last week filed a unique proposal with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking allocation of 30 megahertz in the 700 MHz bands for a potentially privately funded, nationwide public-safety emergency communications system (TelecomWeb news break, April 27).

Cyren Call Communications Corp. - headed by Co-founder and Chairman Morgan O'Brien (who also founded Nextel) - seeks two 15 megahertz chunks of the RF spectrum to bracket the two 12 megahertz chunks in the same 700 MHz band that digital television (DTV) transition legislation will eventually re-allocate from former analog broadcasters to first-responder use.

While the Cyren Call idea ostensibly would coexist with the 24 megahertz envisioned for public safety during the DTV migration through February 2009, it would completely disrupt the planned 2008 auction of channels in the 700 MHz bands (two blocks each of 5 megahertz and 10 megahertz of spectrum) for commercial applications that the FCC and the industry has advocated during decades of DTV discussion and lobbying.

The 45-page proposal was accompanied by several exhibits and appendix documents, including a 20-page 700 MHz auction economic analysis by economist Alan Pearce, Ph.D. of Information Age Economics, on both public safety and homeland security benefits of what Cyren Calls considers a public-private partnership.

But there were dissenters right away, focusing on the revenues that political figures are hoping to add to the U.S. Treasury from the auction and usurping the commercial auction that would help pay for the first-responder deployments and other emergency communications programs. Earlier this year (TelecomWeb news break, Feb. 9; TPR, Feb. 13), President Bush signed into law a massive budget bill that included the federal DTV mandate and raised hopes that the 700 MHz auction aimed at new wireless applications could generate between $10 billion and $20 billion.

Although there was an apparent blessing of Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Fred Upton (R-Mich.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, expressed opposition to the proposal. "The DTV bill which Congress recently passed will clear 24 megahertz of spectrum for critically important public safety interoperable communications, provide $1 billion for new public safety radios, enable the auctioning of valuable spectrum for new wireless services for consumers all across America, and bring in billions of dollars to the federal treasury from those auctions," he said. "The Cyren Call proposal threatens to undermine that equation, and for this reason I oppose it."

CTIA Drops The Cyren Call

CTIA - The Wireless Association also immediately threw water on the proposal. Steve Largent, president and CEO, said his organization believes Cyren Call's new proposal will have the "unintended consequences of halting deployment" of the much-needed interoperable communications system for public safety envisioned by the DTV legislation's 24 megahertz allocation the 700 MHz band (not to mention industry enthusiasm. innovative and cutting-edge services in the spectrum Congress additionally allocated for commercial use in the auction).

"The additional spectrum that will be made available for public safety and consumer applications is a significant and vital allotment. In addition, $1 billion of the anticipated auction proceeds has been earmarked to fund public safety communications," Largent stated.

"A new debate would arrest the progress Congress has made in providing both the spectrum and funding that it has pledged to public safety," he added. "Additionally, this new proposal would deny American consumers the benefits of the spectrum allocation and assignment, both in terms of the billions of dollars in revenue that will flow into the U.S. Treasury, as well as the delivery of new services to more than 200 million U.S. wireless consumers, many of whom rely on their wireless devices for enhanced productivity, safety and security."

Cyren Call's move is the latest development impacting policy decisions on different aspects of public-safety communications. Fewer than two months ago (TPR, March 20), the FCC proposed looking at whether segments of 24 megahertz in the 700 MHz band (allocated to public-safety usage after the broadcast DTV transition) could also be earmarked and modified to accommodate broadband communications based on three specific shared general-use proposals submitted by the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council, Motorola and Lucent Technologies.

The commission also is considering a petition from pulver.com and Evslin Consulting on new rules for enhanced 911 calling that establish alternate public-safety and commercial customer communications services for end users affected by disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, including emergency voice-mail service activations, faster number porting to alternative carriers and formal "outage" parameters that would automatically jumpstart the new procedures.