Ten years after O’Brien proposal, there is light at the end of the tunnel for public-safety broadband communications
Today marks the 10th anniversary of Morgan O’Brien unveiling his public-safety broadband vision during his IWCE 2006 keynote—a speech that would lead to a dramatic shift in spectrum policy and the direction of public-safety communications, eventually leading to the establishment of FirstNet.
Two weeks from today, proposals from offeror teams are due to FirstNet. All indications are that there will be at least a couple of bids to build and maintain a nationwide public-safety broadband network, but we won’t know for certain until the end of the month—assuming FirstNet releases any information at that time—and nothing will be official until a contractor signs a 25-year deal late this year, at the earliest.
FirstNet’s fate is still up in the air, but one thing is certain: Even the pursuit of FirstNet would not have been possible without O’Brien’s 2006 proposal. Instead, U.S. public safety could be one of the few—if not the only—sectors in the world utilizing wideband data technology, as opposed to broadband.
That’s because the FCC band plan in 2006 called for the 24 MHz of spectrum allocated for public-safety communication to be divided between narrowband and wideband technologies. Although the frequencies have been shuffled around, the narrowband channels exist today, primarily supporting large P25 networks. In 2006, a few wideband-data projects for public safety reportedly were on the verge of being built.
But that changed shortly after O’Brien made his IWCE keynote speech, in which he advocated that public safety should be allocated 30 MHz of contiguous spectrum that would be leverage to build a broadband wireless network that would carry mission-critical data traffic for first responders. The 37.000-site network would be used for both commercial and public-safety purposes, but public-safety traffic would be prioritized on the system.
If this sounds familiar, it should—the details and players have changed, but this vision is largely what FirstNet is trying to pursue today.
But O’Brien’s proposal was not exactly an overwhelming hit with public safety at IWCE 2006. There were a lot of doubters. Some didn’t trust O’Brien, because they perceived him as the guy most responsible for 800 MHz interference from Nextel Communications—the company O’Brien co-founded—that led to the massive rebanding effort that is only winding down today.
Many wanted to proceed with wideband plans and were fearful that pursuing a broadband dream might delay public safety’s hopes to access wireless data. Others thought the notion was far-fetched, because federal lawmakers and policymakers were much more interested in allocating spectrum for commercial wireless than for public-safety communications. There was no way federal power brokers would give public safety another 30 MHz of 700 MHz spectrum, on top of the aforementioned 24 MHz already allocated to first responders in the band.
That proved to be true; there was no new spectrum allocated to public safety at the time, but other aspects of the proposal quickly gathered support and political momentum. The FCC—acting with unusual speed—revamped the 700 MHz band plan to create a contiguous 10 MHz swath of broadband spectrum while getting rid of the public-safety wideband allocation in 2007.
