A privatized national public safety network?

A PRIVATIZED NATIONAL PUBLIC SAFETY NETWORK?
[SOURCE: Lasar's Letter on the FCC, AUTHOR: Matthew Lasar]
It will operate almost 250 video and broadband channels, and be allowed to access hundreds more under certain conditions. It will allow thousands public safety agencies to exchange data about weather emergencies and potential terrorist attacks. It will enable police agencies to exchange mug shots, fingerprints, and share real-time video monitoring of emergency or potentially criminal situations. And it will be run by a commercial entity that charges on a fee-for-service basis, even permitted to market spectrum to other companies "through leases or in the form of public/private partnerships." On December 20th the Federal Communications Commission issued a Ninth Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on how to use the 700 MHz band for public safety purposes. "We believe that the time may have come for a significant departure from the typical public safety allocation model the Commission has used in the past," the Notice argues. In fact, what the NPRM proposes could be described as radical—a highly centralized, privately run emergency communications system that the document claims will function as a non-profit, yet could be allowed to lease out spectrum using a model similar to that recently proposed by the Microsoft Corporation in a series of FCC filings. Here it is, the future of public safety communications as envisioned by Kevin Martin's FCC.
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