Implementing Public Safety Broadband Provisions of the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012

In this Order, the Federal Communications Commission adopts an approach to allow limited deployment of public safety broadband services to first responders in the existing public safety broadband spectrum (763-768/793-798 MHz) pursuant to existing Special Temporary Authority (STA) rules.

The FCC expects that this will be the case in very few instances, and only where it can conclude that such deployment clearly serves the public interest and will not be detrimental to the Public Safety Spectrum Act’s goals or likely to jeopardize FirstNet’s mandate to deploy a nationwide interoperable public safety broadband network. The FCC believes that the public interest might be strongly served where, among other things, a project is near completion in terms of development and has been the subject of sustained investment over time, where it will address a significant and specific public-safety need, and where it is consistent with the “recommended minimum technical requirements” for nationwide interoperability recently developed by the Interoperability Board.