At last Wednesday’s hearing on wireless 911 legislation, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) made special note of a front-page Washington Post story published that day about communications problems hindering rescue efforts at Columbine High School last month.
Wyden’s point was that wireless 911 legislation, cosponsored by Senate communications subcommittee Chairman Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) and Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), might somehow help to overcome such glitches. Not exactly.
Actually, the Columbine tragedy illustrated-at least in this sad instance-that wireless 911 worked.
At other times and in other places, wireless 911 calls have not made it to emergency dispatchers. The result has been injury and death. The wireless industry believes making 911 the universal emergency phone number and giving wireless carriers the same liability protection as wireline carriers should fix the problem. Never mind that variations in foliage and climate are beyond the powers of the mighty Congress and the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association.
Others say industry contributes to the problem because it opposes what some believe is a superior technical solution to “dead zones” and because it chooses not to erect transmitters in less-populated areas for economic reasons.
Back to Columbine. The big problem there was that wireless circuits were overloaded.
Wyden, a thoughtful lawmaker whose home state of Oregon has fostered enhanced wireless 911 development, unwittingly put his finger on another public-safety problem that gets less publicity but is every bit as important as E911.
Obstacles to emergency response in Littleton, Colo., on April 20, according to the Post, were caused by the inability of public-safety agencies to communicate with each other.
That should come as no surprise to police, firefighters, medics and federal law enforcement.
Public-safety frequencies are fragmented, a weak link and critical problem for state, local and federal officials in dealing with catastrophes like the World Trade Center bombing, the AirFlorida plane crash and Columbine.
Interoperability is the key.
Help is on the way. Congress in 1997 earmarked 24 megahertz in the 700 MHz band for public-safety radio communications.
The Federal Communications Commission and other federal agencies are working with public-safety officials, vendors and others to craft a plan that improves the fragile state of public-safety radio communications today.
The focal point for the effort is the National Coordination Committee, which is in the good hands of former FCC and White House official Kathleen Wallman.
If you’re interested, NCC is looking for a few good volunteers.
