DHS’ Boyd Says Carriers Don’t Have Clue on Public Safety Spectrum Needs
Carriers have been “disingenuous” in contending that public safety will already have plenty of good spectrum at 700 after the DTV transition, and won’t don’t need more, said David Boyd, dir.-command, control & interoperability at DHS. “They haven’t got a clue what emergency operations are like or what is required,” Boyd said during an FCBA lunch Wed.
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Boyd said he was “offended” by carrier claims that public safety doesn’t need more spectrum. Carriers have argued in recent filings at the FCC (CD Feb 28 p8) and in lobbying on the Hill that carriers don’t need more spectrum, but should use what they have more efficiently. Boyd took particular aim at a Feb. study by Criterion Economics, which said public safety already had enough spectrum to build a wireless network. “I thought it was not only distorted but they knew better when they did it,” he said.
Police and other first responders face a spectrum crunch, Boyd said. “In a number of major urban areas right now… it is very hard for an officer who is in trouble to be able to get on,” he said: “It’s so crowded right now that he has trouble getting on when he needs .. Remember that this isn’t a dropped call that means it’s going to be inconvenient because I can’t tell you I'm going to be late for lunch. This is a ’someone is shooting at me’ or ‘I've got someone bleeding to death.'”
Boyd likened public safety spectrum to DoD spectrum, noting that much of its airwaves are unused most of the time. “We need to have available what they have when the fight’s going,” he said: “You have to look not at average loading… but peak loading because peak loading is what they have to support.”
Commercial systems aren’t designed for emergencies, but public safety systems must be, Boyd said. “This is the challenge I make to the carriers: Demonstrate to me that your system will not collapse in the first 5 seconds of an emergency,” he said. “So far, you can take for granted the cell system is going to be locked up, the local PSTN is going to be locked up” when disaster strikes.
Boyd also said the $1 billion in 700 MHz revenue set to go to public safety in the DTV transition will help interoperable communications no matter how it’s spent. “The worst case is a good case,” he said: “This money is going to help modernize, improve systems on the ground, anyway.”
Program timetables could be hard to meet, Boyd warned. NTIA last week announced it was shifting oversight of the program to DHS. “The one part of the timeline in the legislation that worries me is that there is a 3-year window by which it is supposed to be spent,” he said: “That’s pretty hard on localities… One of the great problems we tend to have is we have a natural tendency for Congress to require that the grants be down and be spent before the planning happens, which is a little bit like ready, fire, aim.” Another flaw is that the program doesn’t provide money for planning, Boyd said. “What that sometimes does is to drive the local agencies to the trusted vendor, who writes the RFP,” he said. “That’s probably not where we want to be.”
Federal officials must make their systems interoperable with local first responders’, rather than the other way around, Boyd said. “Federal public safety needs to think about how to leverage the state and local infrastructure,” he said. “It is larger and more robust than anything the federal agencies will ever be able to roll out.”