Public-safety groups disagree on ‘public-safety entity’ definition, including utility usage of FirstNet

Providing key political support to the public-safety lobbying effort at the time were Verizon and AT&T, commercial wireless giants that won most of the 700 MHz commercial spectrum auctioned by the FCC. While other commercial carriers wanted the FCC to conduct a commercial auction for the D Block spectrum, Verizon and AT&T officials were outspoken in their support of allocating the spectrum to public safety—a fact that should not be overlooked, according to APCO.

“Major communications carriers supported public safety’s efforts in part because they intended their efforts to result in a network that serves first responders, and not, for example, other customers of their commercial services, such as individual consumers and utilities,” the APCO filing states. “The prohibition in the Act against offering services directly to consumers supports this view.

“The term ‘consumers,’ in this case, is intended to be read broadly—essentially, any of those typical customers of wireless service providers that are not first responders. FirstNet’s mission is providing an otherwise unobtainable service for first responders, not competing with wireless carriers.”

But a joint response from the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) and the Utilities Telecom Council (UTC) states the belief that utilities should qualify as a public-safety entity under both the traditional definition and the broader definition established by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. While some utility functions, such as automated meter reading, could be preempted by public safety during an emergency, core “mission-critical” applications that determine whether the utility can function properly should not be preempted, according to the filing.

“These mission-critical applications include, but are not limited to, voice services, SCADA, distribution automation, protective relaying and synchrophasors –all of which require high degrees of reliability in order to protect worker safety and operational safety for the benefit of the general public, as well,” the EEI and UTC response states. “Any interruption of these applications can significantly jeopardize the safety of life, health or property, such that utility mission-critical applications should have priority access on the network.

“As a technical matter, utility mission-critical applications consume relatively low bandwidth and can be easily accommodated on the network without impacting other important public safety applications. For example, an emergency in one area should not require that the network preempt or even throttle the bandwidth that is available for utility mission critical applications in other areas of the network or even other sectors served by a single site near the location of the emergency.”