PSSA suggests a way for FCC to give FirstNet Authority access to 4.9 GHz, even with legal questions

Public Safety Spectrum Alliance (PSSA) this week outlined a framework that would let the FCC provide access the FirstNet Authority to the 4.9 GHz band via a nationwide overlay license awarded to a separate nationwide band manager, thereby circumventing legal issues raised last week about the PSSA’s previous proposal.

PSSA representatives have recommended that the FCC grant the FirstNet Authority a nationwide license to the 4.9 GHz band—50 MHz of spectrum that historically has been dedicated to public-safety use but deemed to be underutilized by the FCC. Proponents of the PSSA proposal believe the FirstNet Authority would be able to improve 4.9 GHz utilization—supporting 5G connectivity, among other things—and the surrounding ecosystem for public safety, citing the success of FirstNet as evidence.

However, a legal analysis commissioned by the Coalition for Emergency Response and Critical Infrastructure (CERCI) described PSSA’s proposal as “unlawful” for various reasons, noting that the FirstNet Authority is a federal entity and that the FCC regulates spectrum licensed to non-federal entities.

In a filing this week, PSSA continues to advocate for the FCC to directly award the FirstNet Authority with a nationwide license to the 4.9 GHz spectrum. But the filing also outlines a framework in which the FCC would issue the nationwide license to a single band manager and require the band manager to have a sharing arrangement with the FirstNet Authority.

“The Commission should assign one nationwide overlay license to a single Band Manager and adopt rules providing that the overlay licensee engage in a sharing agreement with the FirstNet Authority pursuant to Section 2.103 of the Commission’s rules, as modified in Appendix A,” according to the PSSA filing.

“Even if the Commission were to conclude that the FirstNet Authority is a federal entity, Section 2.103 already allows sharing of the 4.9 GHz band with federal entities, and … can be expanded to more clearly accommodate the FirstNet Authority’s proposed use of the spectrum, regardless of whether it is a federal entity.”

PSSA’s filing also details the organization’s beliefs about who should be the band manager, noting that it “should be a non-federal entity that does not own or operate infrastructure.” In addition, the band manager “should have extensive familiarity and experience in public-safety spectrum uses and applications, spectrum planning issues and frequency coordination,” according to the PSSA filing.

PSSA recommends that the band manager should have the following characteristics:

“• Have the engineering expertise and extensive public safety spectrum management background in place in-house to identify and develop coordination practices designed to protect incumbent users as well as introduce new 5G use of the 4.9 GHz band by the FirstNet Authority;

“• Be intimately familiar with public safety communications, practices, and systems along with use trends and applications;

“• Be an Accredited Standards Developer (ASD) certified by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standards body with a history of leading and participating in the development of accepted public safety standards;

“• Hold FCC certification as a public safety frequency coordinator with experience advocating for the advancement of public safety communications spectrum management and technology trends; and

“• Have a Memorandum of Understanding in place with the [FCC] Enforcement Bureau that outlines responsibilities and duties associated with resolving interference issues.”

Some have suggested that a band manager could be a consortium of multiple entities that could address all capabilities desired by the FCC. The only single entity that meets the PSSA criteria as a public-safety-standards body and public-safety frequency coordinator is the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO), according to multiple sources.

Jeff Johnson—CEO of the Western Fire Chiefs Association and former FirstNet Authority vice chair—who authored the PSSA filing, emphasized the band manager’s role in protecting incumbent users of the 4.9 GHz spectrum.

“I’m anxious to see how the FCC believes that needs to happen … It’s not clear to us how they would like to make it work,” Johnson said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “What we know is we believe it can work, and we believe that’s a good way to protect the incumbents, which is our top priority.”

PSSA officials continue to believe that the FCC directly awarding a nationwide 4.9 GHz license to the FirstNet Authority would be “the simplest, cleanest approach,” but the PSSA wanted to provide an alternative method to the FCC to achieve a similar result for public safety, according to Johnson.

“They [FCC commissioners] have lots of options, and we don’t want to take any options off the table,” he said. “This one seemed like one we haven’t mentioned before, and we thought we’d put it on the table.

“Our strategy is to continue to put options on the table as they become known to us, if they achieve our goal, which is to add spectrum to the NPSBN and to protect incumbents.”

Exactly how the relationship would work between a 4.9 GHz band manager/licensee and the FirstNet Authority was not outlined in the PSSA filing.

“We tried not to be too prescriptive,” Johnson said. “We wanted to raise the concept, and that’s it.”

Sources speaking to IWCE’s Urgent Communications could not recall an example of a public-safety frequency coordinator holding a license to spectrum dedicated to public-safety use—the alternative proposal made by the PSSA—but none of them knew of any prohibition.

Mark Crosby, chief strategy officer for the Enterprise Wireless Alliance (EWA), said that EWA has spectrum licenses, but he noted that EWA has a separate entity—with a separate board of directors—that performs this role, as opposed to EWA’s frequency-coordination unit.

Alan Tilles, a longtime communications lawyer and founder of The Law Offices of Alan Tilles, said he does not know of any reason why the alternative proposal in the PSSA filing would be prohibited but questioned the intent of the approach.

“It seems to me that we’re trying to torture the rules to obtain a result,” Tilles said.