T-Band mandate should not be a problem for public-safety agencies, Dowd says

News of the T-Band wrinkle resulted in a flurry of phone calls and meetings among New York City officials that day, and the resulting consensus was positive, Dowd said.

“Everybody kind of relaxed and understood that, overall, what happened was a huge positive for public safety nationwide,” he said. “So the excitement of passing the legislation was a little bit tempered in some of the major cities that were using T-Band. But again, it’s not an issue that—I think in the long run—is going to be a problem.”

One result of the T-Band mandate was that the FCC subsequently decided that T-Band agencies would not be subject to the agency’s 2013 narrowbanding requirement for public-safety radio systems operating on VHF and UHF spectrum, because they might have to relocate within a decade.

NYPD had not started to narrowband its massive LMR system when the legislation was passed, even though the FCC’s narrowbanding deadline was just 10 months away. The FCC’s ruling for public-safety T-Band system meant that a potential showdown between the FCC and NYPD over the narrowbanding issue never materialized.

“It’s amazing how you can conveniently forget certain things,” Dowd said jokingly when reminded of the NYPD’s narrowbanding situation at the time.

“By that December, I was going to have to explain why we hadn’t narrowbanded. But the reason we hadn’t was because it was going to cost the city of New York $300 million to narrowband the NYPD’s radio system. Quite frankly, we didn’t see it as something that was going to be necessary in the long run—kind of a waste of funds.”