Katrina's Radio Silence
[Commentary] Hurricane Katrina blew emergency communications away, crippling relief efforts. Now public safety radio reforms are being floated from every think tank. Some suggest more money and some suggest more spectrum for first responders. Throwing money, frequencies or technology at public safety radio will do little to improve the situation. To save lives, federal policy makers must resist the temptation to impose “apartheidâ€, treating public safety networks as so special that they must be quarantined on frequencies of their own. Emergency radio services need to exit their government technology ghetto and get onboard advanced networks  as smart customers, not Soviet-style suppliers. The solution is to buy public safety radio service just as police cars are purchased from automakers. Private sector operators or system aggregators should bid to supply public safety networks. Airwaves should not be quarantined. This would open up shared use of frequencies, leveraging network economies. Three aspects are key. First, network sharing must be legal. Building tiny castles for each department is ridiculously expensive. Second, public safety spectrum must be available to the marketplace. Agencies benefit from selling airwave access during non-emergency moments, enabling (financially and functionally) the sharing of advanced networks. Finally, local radio fiefdoms must be conquered. Only with regional or perhaps state-wide systems will police in one town achieve mission critical coordination with police in the next. Throwing money -- or radio spectrum -- at police and fire departments will not prevent the next unnatural disaster in radio communications. Turning first responders from uncompetitive network providers into smart shoppers of advanced technology, will. "Waving around internet buzz words and hinting that there is a tech fix," writes Gerry Faulhaber, Wharton economist, "is not only not helpful, it is counterproductive."