Let public safety drive rebanding effort
Although the public-safety communications community continues to deal with a series of issues, one of our highest priorities is 800 MHz rebanding. Much is at stake for public safety in this process, and the manner in which we move forward is of paramount importance.
We are now a little more than two years into the project. Recently, some have unfairly suggested that public safety was holding up the process. We didn’t understand that. Everywhere we traveled we heard reports of public safety working hard on this and in too many cases, encountering problems not of its making.
We also heard reports of unanticipated obstacles and roadblocks. Public-safety leadership — in cooperation with the FCC, the Transition Administrator and Sprint Nextel — has worked hard to understand those problems, deal with them and put processes in place to move things forward. We have made much progress, including the difficult issues concerning the border areas.
Most recently, Sprint Nextel has suggested the need for “midcourse corrections,” which include extensive delays in implementation. Cited as reasons were issues concerning rebanding planning costs and public-safety interoperability.
We find this difficult to understand. Interoperability is nothing new within the public-safety community, and those issues were known and understood when rebanding first was contemplated four years ago. Moreover, the anticipated cost of planning to move each affected public-safety agency was anticipated and addressed from the onset. The resources and the logistics of making the actual moves were discussed and assumed to have been taken into account from the beginning. We could go on. But to summarize, we are perplexed.
Are some minor adjustments to the timetables in order? We think so. But we are two years into this process, and we have to move forward as expeditiously as possible — to do otherwise would jeopardize a majority of the participants in this process. We must keep in the forefront of our minds the life-threatening interference issues that brought us to this place.
But how should those adjustments be determined? What should be the primary considerations in determining what is adjusted, when and how?
Although the citizens of America have many choices in today’s public marketplace, most of them, within their own communities, have one fire department. They have one police or law enforcement agency and their ambulance service — although perhaps more diverse — is still limited to local availability. These resources are largely funded by local citizens, primarily through local tax dollars.
The technology upon which these public-safety entities rely for local and wide area communications is similarly funded by local tax dollars. Public-safety agencies in political jurisdictions throughout America work with their neighbors, and they understand those working relationships. There are no hard boundaries; rather public-safety agencies support each other on a local basis for the common good. Who, then, best understands the ways, the means, the needs, the working relationships and the time frames within which rebanding can effectively occur? We think the answer is public safety, and we think public safety will respond in an amazing way if given the chance to do so.
We understand the complexity of the situation. We understand the competing interests. We understand that there are many perspectives. We appreciate the extensive process and planning that went into getting us to this point. We appreciate the FCC’s foresight and continued attention to rebanding. Most certainly we understand all that is at risk. Though recent developments have given rise to important questions, we know where we are. More important, we know where we need to go — and how to get there.
Wanda McCarley is the president of APCO International. She also is operations and training manager for Tarrant County 911 District. She is a certified instructor and curriculum developer and holds an advanced certification in public-safety communications from the state of Texas.
