Agencies in Close Alignment on Regulatory Strategy & LTE Technology Choice for D Block Interoperability

A few months ago, Steve Zipperstein (pictured) of Verizon Wireless spoke in Washington DC on canceling the proposed auction for the D-block and combining it with the adjacent 10 MHz already licensed to the Public Safety Spectrum Trust (PSST). The presentation called for allocating the D-Block to First Responders to facilitate the deployment of an interoperable network. Verizon also offered up its backhaul and back-end systems to support a public safety network using the spectrum. Prior to the Verizon speech, AT&T Wireless had already been floating the same idea.

In May, a group of eight public safety organizations got together and endorsed a similar plan. More recently APCO and NENA issued a joint release citing LTE as their recommended technology choice for D-block networks.

Andrew Seybold wrote in a recent article that “for the first time, the public safety community could have the upper hand.” Clearly getting to this position was the result of hard work and consensus by numerous agencies and organizations. Andy’s piece offers an in-depth analysis of where things stand today and how we got here.

Read the Seybold article here>>

Cellular is Just the Tip of the Licensing Iceberg.

There is a perception that the cellular industry is the only game in town when it comes to spectrum. While it is true they are an "800lb Gorilla" both in terms of their size and spectrum holdings there are a few interesting numbers that provide a different perspective on life.

There are almost 2 million active licenses in the FCC database, discount the amateur radio licenses, the repair shop licenses and all the other odd ball stuff and there are still over 700,000 active licenses. Cellular only accounts for 8,000 of those licenses, roughly 1%. The big numbers are Public Safety, with over 148,000 active licenses and 'industrial/business" which accounts for around 400,000. Quite honestly the public safety number was a surprise to me. This is a number that begins to explain the magnitude of the spectrum management issue faced by Public Safety and Homeland Security.

To me the intriguing thing is the 400,000 industrial licenses. We live in the 21st century with a cellular service that is pretty reliable, ubiquitous and relatively inexpensive, so what is it that attracts industry to all those private 2 way, paging and P2P networks?

Is it still cost, availability, or something more subtle like the desire to be in charge of their own resources or the inability to overlay their business and applications on a cellular service model? As these industrial users begin to evolve to broadband wireless are they any more likely to adopt a cellular service provider than want to go it alone again?