WASHINGTON-Two California lawmakers, citing lack of cooperation from the Federal Communications Commission and the startling prospect that spectrum legislation pushed by Congress and the Clinton administration will not provide a solution to frequency congestion in Southern California, have introduced legislation to give that region emergency spectrum relief.
The revelation that Los Angeles will not benefit from the much-heralded bill to reserve 24 megahertz from TV channels 60-69 for public safety communications is significant given that the need for police, firefighter and emergency medical spectrum in the populous, sprawling region is arguably greater than for any other jurisdiction in the country.
While the public safety spectrum bill sponsored by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) is expected to improve local government public safety communications in most urban areas, Los Angeles may not receive any of that spectrum because of complications connected with the analog-to-digital TV conversion.
Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), who co-sponsored the public safety emergency spectrum bill with Rep. Julian Dixon (D-Calif.), was especially critical of the FCC’s refusal to grant a waiver to the South Bay Regional Communications Authority to use four vacant common carrier channels for public safety.
South Bay is comprised of El Segundo, Gardena, Hawthorne and Manhattan Beach.
“As the most spectrum congested region in the country, the commission must be in a position to use whatever tools are available to make vacant spectrum available to meet public safety needs in Los Angeles,” said Harman.
The bill essentially does what the FCC declined to do: make unused common carrier channels in the 152-159 MHz and the 470-512 MHz band available for public safety.
The FCC, according to Harman, ruled the Authority’s spectrum needs could be accommodated through the massive reconfiguration of private wireless frequencies, a process called “refarming.”
To do so, Harman claims, would have required waiting several years until the refarming proceeding is completed and new, narrowband radios are commercially available. Currently, she said “there are no common police and fire voice channels available for interoperability among agencies in the South Bay and neighboring jurisdictions in the South Bay.”
Former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick wrote to the FCC in August 1996, several months after the agency rejected South Bay’s waiver request, urging the commission to provide near-term relief because new spectrum availability was years away.
A similar waiver request from the State of New Hampshire for statewide mobile radio system was denied in May 1996 because, according to Harman, the FCC wanted to address the matter as part of a broader rulemaking on future public safety needs.
After being sharply criticized by the public safety community and Congress for its future public safety spectrum report in February 1995, the FCC stepped up efforts to address near- and long-term public safety spectrum needs under the auspices of a government-industry advisory committee.
Harman said there already was precedent for providing emergency relief to public safety, pointing to the FCC’s transfer of TV channel 16 to New York City public safety agencies. Los Angeles received the same allocation in the 1980s.
In addition to opening 24 megahertz of TV spectrum to public safety, the McCain bill would underwrite radio system buildout with revenue from auctioned spectrum within TV Channels 60-69. The Arizona lawmaker also is crafting legislation to reform spectrum auction licensing.
