By Jared Hunt, Charleston Daily Mail
Original publication date: June 10, 2011

U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller said he’s committed to passage this year of a sweeping reform of the way the country’s first responders communicate with one another.

Rockefeller has sponsored the Public Safety Spectrum and Wireless Innovation Act, which would create a nationwide, interoperable, wireless broadband network for emergency workers and first responders.

The bill cleared the Senate Commerce Committee, which Rockefeller chairs, on a 21-4 vote Wednesday.

Rockefeller has made the bill a personal cause during this session of Congress.

“It’s just a really, really good thing,” he said during a phone interview Thursday.

“It’s one of those rare pieces of ‘Why can’t we do this this afternoon?’ types of legislation.”

The bill moves forward on a recommendation from the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States – also known as the 9/11 Commission – to address one of the biggest difficulties first responders had on Sept. 11, 2001.

On that day, police, firemen and ambulance crews couldn’t effectively communicate with each other because they were all on different networks. This legislation would create a platform on which they all could communicate.

Rockefeller said the problem is an old one that first came to light during the 1991 Gulf War when various branches of the armed forces couldn’t communicate effectively.

“The Navy couldn’t talk to Air Force; the Air Force couldn’t talk to Marines – nobody could talk to anybody,” Rockefeller said.

While the U.S. Department of Defense found a way to correct that following the Gulf War, the change didn’t affect the first responders on Sept. 11.

“Here it is on the greatest national disaster since Pearl Harbor, and we were right back in the soup again,” Rockefeller said.

“It’s one of the things the 9/11 Commission heavily suggested that we do,” he said. “We’ve done a lot of things they suggested, and this we have not done.”

But while the national tragedies brought the issue to light, Rockefeller said it was the Upper Big Branch mining disaster last year that drove the problem home to him.

He said the same problems first responders had on 9/11 came up again at the mine site, and the only communication with the outside world came through whatever phone lines were available at the Whitesville Elementary School because wireless service was unavailable.

“Nobody could call anybody to say, ‘I think he’s OK,’ or ‘I don’t know’ — so it was like a dead zone,” Rockefeller said.

“It made a huge impression on me – that was my ground zero incident to me because it was in West Virginia and the unfairness and tragedy of it all.”

The bill deals with the country’s broadcast spectrum – the band of radio frequencies through which all of the nation’s communications flow. That includes AM and FM radio, cellular telephone traffic and television broadcasting.

However, there’s only a finite amount of space in the spectrum for communications – about 700 megahertz.

Over the years, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has licensed the entire spectrum for various purposes.

But that doesn’t mean it’s all being used. For instance, some of the spectrum is licensed to companies to provide pager service, which has dropped in popularity over the past decade.

Under the new bill, those license holders could voluntarily give back those licenses to the FCC.

There would be an incentive for the license holder because once the FCC auctioned those licenses, a portion of the proceeds would go back to the company and the rest to the federal government.

It’s estimated this process could generate $28 billion in revenue.

Of that, about $12 billion would be used to create the national broadband network for first responders, $5 billion would be used for continuing research into new communications technologies and the remainder – more than $10 billion – would go to paying down the nation’s debt.

Rockefeller said he was encouraged that more than half of the Republicans on the committee voted for the bill. He hopes that will clear the way for broader bipartisan support when it comes up for a full vote in the U.S. Senate and House.

“This is the perfect piece of legislation because it is bipartisan, because it does reduce the deficit and it doesn’t cost anything,” Rockefeller said.

He said he intends to speak with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., about getting it to the floor of the Senate as soon as possible.

Rockefeller said he’s also committed to making sure that the network is fully implemented in rural areas and the focus is not just on larger metropolitan areas.

“I’m going to be sitting on top of this thing to make sure it happens,” Rockefeller said. “Because tragedy doesn’t just come to cities, it comes to rural areas.”

Contact writer Jared Hunt at [email protected] or 304-348-5148. 

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