Retune 800 MHz Police Radios Faster, Motorola Says
Motorola wants the 800 MHz reconfiguration process itself retuned so public safety radios can be fixed even before all network retuning decisions are made. That was the message from Bill Anaya, Motorola vp govt. relations, during a Thurs. wireless panel at the Practising Law Institute. Motorola has said rebanding will require replacement or retuning or 1.2 million public safety radios, a process not yet begun. Anaya called for a “parallel track” for addressing radios.
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“It’s important that the commercial and public safety users alike have this resolved,” Anaya said: “You've got to get moving on these mobile units and you need to have a parallel process to do that.” Vehicle radios tend to be more difficult to retune than those officers carry, Anaya said. “What has to happen in order to bring this transition to completion requires a lot of touching of the radios,” he said: “For some jurisdictions that have maybe 50,000, 70,000, 80,000 radios, those have to be dealt with before the network can be retuned.” Aaron Goldberger, aide to Comr. Tate, said he has no concerns about rebanding progress. “We'd like to hear from you,” he said: “From the reports we've heard we're very content.”
Meanwhile, Tom Sugrue, vp at T-Mobile, told PLI the AWS auction was the most successful FCC auction ever. “We're delighted,” he said: “We won the most spectrum, paid the most money… Some of auctions in the past were characterized by either irrational exuberance in terms of pricing or irrational depression. This one seemed to get it right.” Sugrue said even if the 3rd U.S. Appeals Court, Philadelphia, agrees with designated entity Council Tree that the auction was flawed it’s unlikely to throw out the results. “Reversing it now would impose a significant hardship on lots of people,” he said: “Everyone points to the Nextwave case when that did happen but that was a very different set of facts.”