Clearing Emergency Radio Waves

CLEARING EMERGENCY RADIO WAVES
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Corey Boles corey.boles@dowjones.com]
Public-safety officials have been complaining for years about static from cellphones that disrupts emergency radio communications. Now the Federal Communications Commission is stepping up the pressure on Sprint Nextel Corp., the company whose signals are causing the most interference, to address the problem. With talk of a renewed threat of a terrorist attack, the middle of the hurricane season approaching and the Minneapolis bridge collapse, some lawmakers are urging the FCC to take more control of the process. "The FCC needs to ensure that our police, firefighters and other first responders can use the spectrum without interference," says Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D., NJ). "Communication on these frequencies is essential for public safety." FCC Chairman Kevin Martin warns that he wants to see progress soon, or the FCC will dictate a remedy. Sprint Nextel concedes it is taking longer than anticipated to solve the problem and attributes the delay to its efforts to do it as economically as possible.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118644768507989972.html?mod=todays_us_pa...
(requires subscription)