By Paul J. Nyden, Charleston Gazette
Original publication date: May 13, 2011

U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller introduced legislation on Thursday to improve the access first responders and public safety officials have to the airwaves.

“Today,” said Rockefeller, D-W.Va., “any 16-year-old with a smartphone is ahead of us in this. That is a little bit embarrassing,”

The bill, called the Public Safety Spectrum and Wireless Innovation Act, would create a unified communications system for police officers, firefighters and other emergency responders dealing with everything from criminal actions to natural disasters.

Rockefeller said the commission that investigated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, recommended such a communications network. On that date, the lack of an effective broadband network made it impossible for New York City police officers to communicate with firefighters and other rescue workers, he said.

“This changes the whole nature of public safety,” Rockefeller said during a telephone news conference. “It has been 10 years [since 9/11] and we haven’t done it. The president is behind this. The [Federal Communications Commission] is behind this. So is every organization in the public safety community.”

That includes Kanawha County Sheriff Mike Rutherford.

“When our SWAT team goes out, we want to be able to look at the schematics of a building, or even just a good picture of the building and the surrounding area,” he said. “The fire department wants the same thing.

“But we cannot do it today. The most we can do is transmit a small picture over our mobile data terminals.”

Rutherford said the system could also help police looking for criminals.

“We could send out a picture of vehicles they are driving. We don’t have that capability now,” he said. “We are very, very excited about this.”

James Gianato, director of the West Virginia Division of Homeland Security, said, “We have been attempting to build a statewide system for many years. One of our key challenges is the availability of spectrum.

“We have a voice system that is statewide, but not enough bandwidth to do anything but voice,” Gianato said.

The bill would create a nationwide broadband network using 10 megahertz of “spectrum,” which would ensure all rural areas have access to the national network, Rockefeller said.

“It will have a huge impact on rural areas of the country. It will include Mingo County, as well as Charleston,” he said.

The new bill would “allocate a swath of airwaves, also known as spectrum, to first responders,” according to a news release from the Senate Commerce Committee, of which Rockefeller is the chairman.

The new legislation would give the FCC authority to hold auctions that would allow “existing spectrum holders to voluntarily give up their airwaves in exchange for a portion of the proceeds of the commercial auction of their spectrum.”

Profits from those auctions would then be used to fund the new nationwide communications network.

Existing “spectrum” owners, like some paging companies, may no longer need access to national airwaves.

But when the FCC auctions access to airwaves to private companies, it might allow a new company to compete with current industry giants, such as Verizon or AT&T, who are raising questions about the legislation.

When the FCC auctions off spectrum access to commercial vendors, it will not pay previous owners “the full amount” of the value of access to broadband airwaves they owned.

Rockefeller predicted the government will raise “$28 billion from people [and companies] voluntarily turning in their spectrum, like paging, which used to be a big deal.

“It will only cost $12 billion to $13 billion to build the nationwide system. The government would have $9 billion or $10 billion left over,” Rockefeller said.

“On a voluntary basis, people will turn in spectrum which they are not using, or which they feel can better be used for public safety,” Rockefeller said. “And this will not cost taxpayers anything.”

About the Author
Reach Paul J. Nyden at [email protected] or 304-348-5164.

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