It looks like everybody and their mother is courting the public-safety market. Thanks to the wonders of digital TV, there’s now a bunch of extra spectrum at 700 MHz, a valuable band due to its propagation characteristics. Congress agreed to give 24 megahertz of this newly freed 700 MHz spectrum to public safety, and then auction off the rest.
Of course, industry is hungry to bid on the 700 MHz that is being auctioned. However, it appears that won’t be enough-industry now looks increasingly hungry for the 700 MHz of spectrum designated for public safety.
It all started with Cyren Call, which made a somewhat unique proposal to the Federal Communications Commission to set aside 30 megahertz of the spectrum to be auctioned and instead use it for a public-safety network that the wireless industry would build and share with first responders.
Then, Verizon Wireless made a similar proposal, offering to build a network with 12 of the 24 megahertz Congress set aside for public safety and rent it out to public safety.
Then, CTIA said it might get into the game and consider using the 700 MHz band for some sort of shared network for both public safety and commercial operators.
And now, the GSM community is making sure they won’t be left out of the fun. In a “technology demonstration,” GSM trade group 3G Americas promoted the “open standards and cost-effective, off-the-shelf equipment” of the GSM-technology family as a perfect fit for public safety in 700 MHz. 3G Americas, along with GSM stalwart Cingular Wireless, didn’t seem to keen on a network-sharing concept, but made sure to point out how great GSM technology can be, even in 700 MHz.
But wait, there’s more! IPWireless made sure that public safety also knows about its UMTS TD-CDMA technology, which has already been chosen by New York City for a public-safety network in the 700 MHz band.
Public safety, it seems, is bloated with choices.
Surely there are benefits to public safety using commercial wireless technologies. After all, if a network can handle the addition of 2 million new users in the span of three months (as some nationwide wireless carriers have had to do), I’d say that network is pretty robust.
However, I suspect my needs as a regular cell phone user are vastly different than the needs of a police officer or firefighter. For example, I rarely need to alert 20 other people to the fact that a bank robber has a gun strapped to his ankle. I do, however, regularly need to call my wife to find out what I need to get at the grocery store.
Public safety should be thorough in evaluating its options, and consider not only the technology, but also who is behind that technology.
