Failure to Communicate

FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Jerry Brito, George Mason University]
[Commentary] For more than two decades, the nation's first responders to emergencies have had to contend with radio communications that were not up to the task. Each time a major calamity such as the Oklahoma City bombing, 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina throws a spotlight on the problem, a blue-ribbon panel is convened. And each time the panel invariably offers the same prescription: more funding and more radio spectrum for public safety agencies. But this kind of treatment has never solved the problem. It targets the symptoms, not the disease. First, responders often cannot communicate with each other because the federal government assigns to each of the 50,000 public safety agencies in the country -- that's every hometown fire and police department -- their own radio license and piece of the spectrum with which to build out a communications system. This is undoubtedly beneficial in so far as it affords localities great flexibility to build a system that best suits their needs. But it comes at a cost: More often than not the custom systems can't "talk" to each other. Here is a better idea: Offer Cyren Call, Frontline and others the opportunity to bid on spectrum already restricted to public safety use. That would allow firms to build national interoperable networks without affecting how much spectrum will be available for commercial use. At the very least, if spectrum now slated for commercial auction must be used, the government should identify an equal amount of existing public safety spectrum that can be auctioned commercially once the new public safety networks are built.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117375296121535034.html?mod=todays_us_op...
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