For the past four years, there has been an issue of critical importance for our nation’s First Responders in front of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). At stake is the fate of a critical public safety resource, 4.9 GHz radio spectrum, the airwaves needed to expand and modernize public safety communications. Since 2020, the Public Safety Spectrum Alliance (PSSA), of which I am a member, has been fighting hard to protect that spectrum.
In 2002 the FCC assigned 4.9 GHz radio spectrum to our country’s first responders. Unfortunately, that spectrum remained massively underutilized by public safety for 20 years. As a result, in 2020 the FCC took that spectrum away from public safety. In 2020, the PSSA led the charge by the entire public safety community to convince the FCC to return the spectrum to us, and thankfully in 2021, the FCC reversed the 2020 decision.
About PSSA
The PSSA is an organization made up of only first responders, dedicated to protecting 4.9 spectrum for public safety, with a transparent nearly decade long history, and supported by thousands of individual first responders. The PSSA believes the logical place to protect and manage 4.9 is the FirstNet Authority- established by federal legislation in 2012 and signed by President Obama, it was a core recommendation of the September 11th commission, and all of state and local public safety fought for its passage. The FirstNet Authority manages the nationwide public safety network for first responders. AT&T won that federal contract. FirstNet is an extremely successful public-private partnership, within the U.S. Department of Commerce which services over 6,000,000 first responder devices across all 50 states. Interestingly, both Verizon and T-Mobile are fighting to prevent this, they claim it would be a spectrum “gift” to AT&T. That’s simply not true, if the FCC were ultimately to assign the spectrum to the FirstNet Authority, it would be required to follow strict federal acquisition rules for its use. Both Verizon and T-Mobile were asked, but declined to bid on the FirstNet contract. The PSSA and the vast majority of first responders believe that today’s 5G technology is the right solution for 4.9 GHz, it allows public safety to take advantage of continuously evolving technology at much, much lower costs. Note that today 5G technology is how 4.9 is used in much of the world.
About CERCI
A very recently created entity called the Coalition for Emergency Response and Critical Infrastructure (CERCI) which counts Verizon, T-Mobile, and other corporations as members, is determined to prevent 4.9 from being assigned to the FirstNet Authority. CERCI would leave you with the impression that 4.9 GHz is widely used by public safety, it is not. Note that the only entity in New York City that uses it is the MTA – for train control. Currently neither the NYPD nor the FDNY use 4.9 for any public safety communications. So why is it that the 4.9 has been so underutilized? Because it’s simply too expensive to build one-off technology networks. That hard reality is true for public safety nationwide.
CERCI has repeatedly claimed the PSSA wants to push current users off the 4.9 GHz spectrum. That’s patently false. The facts are that every PSSA filing with the FCC clearly states that any current public safety users of 4.9 must be allowed to stay on the spectrum for as long as they deem necessary- that will remain the PSSA’s position, it’s unfortunate CERCI continues to say otherwise.
CERCI, created roughly eight months ago, has changed position at least three times on 4.9 GHz. First, it’s FCC filings supported allowing non-public safety utilities to use the radio spectrum. When that didn’t get traction, they changed gears again to support FCC filings that suggested that assigning the 4.9 radio spectrum to the FirstNet Authority would be unconstitutional. The latest effort, by Verizon, and their corporate allies that have been lobbying FCC officials, suggested the spectrum should be auctioned. Taking the spectrum away from public safety and auctioning it, is why the public safety community rallied around protecting this critical resource in 2020. Let’s do the right thing for the nation and use 4.9 GHz spectrum to continue to expand and modernize public safety’s 5G capabilities.