FCC Previews Public Safety Broadband Plan

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski highlighted some of the FCC's working recommendations related to public safety and homeland security that will be addressed in the National Broadband Plan.

He said the FCC's goal is to develop the best short-term and long-term plans for America's first responders. Public safety must have consistent and prompt access to secure, robust networks of the highest quality and first responders should be equipped with state-of-the-art devices and applications that are 100 percent interoperable and easy to use. The top priority, he said, is ensuring that public safety has nationwide access to interoperable broadband wireless communications. The public safety portion of the National Broadband Plan will address three general areas relating to public safety and homeland security.

The Plan will:

1) Recommend concrete steps for the deployment of a nationwide interoperable wireless broadband network for public safety.

2) Focus on increasing cybersecurity and critical infrastructure survivability of broadband networks.

3) Propose measures to advance Next Generation 9-1-1 services and new public alerting initiatives that leverage broadband technology.

The Plan:

• Ensures that broadband wireless communications for public safety will be fully interoperable across all geographies and jurisdictions.
• Ensures nationwide coverage.
• Provides for funding for the construction, operation and evolution of the public safety network.
• Provides for reserve capacity and needed redundancy and reliability through roaming and priority access on commercial broadband networks.
• Ensures that public safety will have available to it cutting-edge technology, including handsets, at consumer electronic prices.

The Plan recommends:

1. Creation of an Emergency Response Interoperability Center (ERIC) at the FCC to establish a technical framework that will guarantee nationwide interoperability from the start.
2. $16-18 billion over 10 years in public funding for the creation of a federal grant program to help support network construction, operation and evolution of the pubic safety broadband network.
3. Allowing public safety access not just the D Block spectrum, but the entire 700 MHz band through roaming and priority access arrangements.
4. Public safety partnering with any commercial operator it determines it is appropriate or, if it prefers, a systems integrator to partner with.
5. A strategy for obtaining additional spectrum resources for broadband use.