Could Another 9-11 Be Mitigated by a $16 Billion National Public Safety Broadband Network?

Although broadband infrastructure companies are building out a national network of high-capacity fiber optics for broadband, the needs of emergency service "interoperable public safety" communications aren't being met by these private plans. So the Federal Communications Commission is recommending that Congress allocate $6 billion in Federal cash to build a nation-wide, fiber network and lay out a further $6 billion to $10 billion to fund its ongoing operations over the next 10 years.

The network will be supported by a wireless system too, which could be created by forcing networks that recently bought frequencies in the 700MHz band to devote a small segment of priority airspace to the public safety grid. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is strongly arguing that it's the "best and shortest path" to building a national public safety grid, and he's irritated that through political wranglings "we have gone too long with little progress to show for it." What would the grid be used for? Its inception lay in analysis of how the emergency services around the U.S. responded to the events of 9/11. Airwaves were clogged with radio pager and cellphone calls, from emergency services and members of the public, and there was no way to absolutely guarantee the emergency responders or government officials would get priority on the airwaves, or even digital Net-based communications. A reserved broadband network, with prioritized radio bandwidth for mobile communications would've helped matters incredibly, and that's exactly what the FCC is aiming at.