Rebanding faces an uphill climb
Entering August and the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials annual conference, Utah Communications Agency Network Executive Director Steve Proctor acknowledged his organization will be challenged to sign an 800 MHz rebanding agreement this fall.
“We’re a little bit behind the curve on the planning schedule,” Proctor said. “We’re going to meet with Motorola [at the end of July] and, if we can get them to respond in 30 or 40 days, hopefully we can meet the deadline in October.”
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. After all, UCAN was cited as the model of a proactive public-safety licensee at APCO’s Winter Summit just six months ago, when the Utah organization was announced as the first public-safety agency to have a planning-funding agreement approved by Sprint Nextel and, later, the Transition Administrator (TA).
At the time, officials for UCAN and Sprint Nextel expressed optimism that Utah’s largest 800 MHz operator would sign a final rebanding agreement by June 30, one month before the scheduled negotiating period would end. Instead, even with the FCC approving a TA proposal to extend the Wave 1 negotiating deadline for NPSPAC licensees by three months, UCAN will be hard-pressed to complete a deal within the new timetable, Proctor said.
Proctor is confident that UCAN will be able to complete rebanding in a timely manner, but the fact that his organization — an agency generally considered to be ahead of the rebanding curve and one that retained an attorney in January 2005 to aid its efforts — is not speeding through the process is an ominous sign for other public-safety agencies reconfiguring their systems.
“We’ve asked for an extension simply because, the truth of the matter is, it’s more work than you ever imagined,” he said. “I think we’ve misjudged the amount of time [rebanding is] going to take — not only from my perspective, but Sprint Nextel and the Transition Administrator have misjudged how much time this is going to take.”
Complications for UCAN began at the most fundamental level of planning — assembling an inventory of the communications assets that would be impacted by rebanding. With 121 government agencies owning equipment that utilize the network, just identifying all the affected radios proved to be “more mind-boggling than we ever imagined,” Proctor said.
Adding to the difficulty is the fact that building out a system is a “once in a career” undertaking for a public-safety communications manager, so planning a capital-intensive project and meeting all the procurement requirements for various entities is not a common occurrence, Proctor said.
For other public-safety groups, there are different challenges negotiating a deal, said Alan Tilles, who represents many public-safety entities in rebanding negotiations as a partner in the law firm of Shulman Rogers Gandal Pordy & Ecker.
“There are five parties that have to cooperate: the licensee, the consulting engineer, Nextel, the manufacturer and the TA,” he said. “For any deal that doesn’t get done, you can lay the blame on any one of those five, and it’s different for every deal.”
APCO President Wanda McCarley echoed this sentiment, noting a lengthy list of rebanding issues — typically affecting only an individual entity — that have been brought to her attention this year.
“Every side … has had indiscretions in terms of inaccurate cost assessment or exorbitant cost allocation,” she said.
In an effort to facilitate the negotiating process with public-safety entities, several actions have been taken recently. A fast-track procedure to speed planning funding to licensees was implemented, the FCC granted time extensions for negotiations and Sprint Nextel created a public-safety advisory board.
McCarley said she believes more needs to be done to help public safety but the key parties are making progress in a most crucial area.
“What I believe is a good thing is that the Transition Administrator, Sprint Nextel and the consensus parties … have developed a working relationship that allows us to address issues and spot issues,” she said. “What I think we have today that we didn’t have before is communication. That, I think, will make the difference in solving problems.”
Charles Werner, chief of the Charlottesville (Va.) Fire Department and a member of the Sprint Nextel public-safety advisory board, expressed greater optimism about the measures taken to help public safety reband.
“I think enough is being done so far, but there really also has to be a due diligence on the part of public safety to step up to the plate,” Werner said. “Public safety has to … do the necessary planning and don’t wait until it’s upon you — you know it’s coming. Unfortunately, too often we’re busy with so many other things that we put [rebanding] off until it’s already upon us, and then we’re behind the eight ball.”
This problem is not unique to licensees that have hesitated to embark on the rebanding process. Public-safety communications staffs already are lean, so trying to coordinate such a large project while trying to meet heightened expectations regarding data services and interoperability can be a strain even in departments that have planned well for rebanding, Proctor said.
“I’m running into it with my own staff,” he said. “We’ve got to get this rebanding done and they’re telling me, ‘How are we going to do all the rest of this stuff we’ve got to do this summer?’”
While negotiating deals with Sprint Nextel has been the primary focus of rebanding to date, there is a growing concern within the industry that there will not be enough resources to complete the necessary technical tasks in a timely manner. The FCC’s decision to provide more time for negotiating rebanding deals — something public-safety officials requested — did not help matters, Tilles said.
“It’s good in that the people in that wave have some additional time to get their agreements done,” he said. “The bad news is that, because we’re delaying the start date without extending the end date, we’re compressing all this work that has to be done into a much smaller timeframe, and that is going to put a very serious strain on resources. And that is my biggest concern now.”
It’s a concern shared by many, with APCO’s McCarley stating that a “supply-and-demand nightmare” is developing. For instance, Motorola last month asked the FCC to let licensees install its rebanding software on more than 800,000 radios nationwide during normal maintenance cycles. If licensees are required to wait until their rebanding agreements are finalized to begin installing software, it will be difficult to do the work necessary to complete rebanding within the three-year timeframe mandated by the FCC.
Critics of the vendor giant have speculated that the FCC request was an attempt by Motorola, which has received remarkably few rebanding orders to date, to generate rebanding-related revenue more quickly. But Proctor said the concerns raised by Motorola in its FCC letter are legitimate, especially when public-safety waves begin to overlap during the implementation phase of the program.
“When you look at the inventory of technologists across this country that are available to pull this rebanding process off, there are only so many companies with so many bodies,” Proctor said. “Once this demand ratchets up and gets moving into tornado mode, I can guarantee you that there aren’t going to be enough bodies to do all the work. Agencies are going to have to be prioritized … and that’s really going to put a cork in this process.
LENDING A HAND
Measures taken this year to help public-safety licensees in the 800 MHz rebanding process
FEB. 1
Transition Administrator announces new program to streamline planning-funding requests.
MARCH 31
FCC approves TA requests to delay the start of voluntary negotiations for Wave 2 NPSPAC licensees by three months and for Wave 3 NPSPAC licensees by one month.
MAY 11
Sprint Nextel creates a public-safety advisory board to provide public-safety licensees with a way to communicate rebanding concerns to the carrier via their peers.
MAY 19
TA, Sprint Nextel and public-safety officlals announce the creation of a fast-track option to streamline the planning-funding application process for some licensees.
MAY 26
FCC approves TA request to extend the mandatory negotiating period for Wave 1 NPSPAC licensees by three months.
JUNE 15
TA releases details of fast-track option for submitting planning-funding requests.
