DHS SURVEYING SPECTRUM HOLDINGS OF ITS 22 AGENCIES
The Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) is querying federal agencies as to what spectrum they use in an effort to assess which frequency bands will be moving to the new department, a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) spokesman said. FEMA is one of 22 agencies that make up DHS and is conducting the inventory on behalf of the department. While some agencies have been concerned that they may have to give up spectrum under the auspices of DHS, the spokesman described the exercise as the creation of a “knowledge base” of who has which frequencies.
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Several sources said one issue closely watched by agencies that comprise the new department was the extent to which they would maintain control over their own spectrum assets. “There have been some concerns from some agencies that they might be losing frequencies” as they transitioned to DHS, the FEMA spokesman said. The department has indicated “it doesn’t come down to someone losing and someone gaining. It’s all within the federal government and the frequencies will still be part of the federal government and those elements [agencies] that had the frequencies assigned to them originally are assigned to the individual elements and not to the main headquarters,” he said. As an example, a piece of spectrum assigned to the U.S. Coast Guard, which now is part of DHS, would not “suddenly” be reassigned to DHS hq, he said. The inventory is continuing, he said: “It’s a management process to determine what frequencies various agencies have had.”
Many of the agencies that now make up DHS operate in the same range of frequencies but on specialized channels, with many using land mobile spectrum at 406-420 MHz and 162-174 MHz, an industry source said. “There’s a little push and shove as to which channels go with whom,” the source said. So one question has been the extent to which channels set aside in the Treasury Dept. for an agency such as the U.S. Customs Service, which now is part of DHS but had been under Treasury, would be shifted to the new department, the source said. While the govt. has taken pains to point out that it doesn’t plan to take spectrum away from a DHS component that was shifted from elsewhere in the govt., agencies such as Customs had complicating issues such as cross-border coordination agreements with Mexico and Canada, the source said. On March 1, when DHS formally opened its doors, the border inspections functions of the Customs Service, the Immigration & Naturalization Service and the Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service, as well as the U.S. Border Patrol, transferred to DHS’s Bureau of Customs & Border Protection. Another question is how the frequency management offices that had been part of standalone federal agencies would fit together now.
Homeland security spectrum requirements also surfaced in a recent letter to the FCC from NTIA on proposed changes to create secondary allocations for amateur radio service in the 5250-5400 kHz part of the high-frequency (HF) band. Acting Assoc. Administrator of NTIA’s Spectrum Management Office Fredrick Wentland said that, in consultation with the Interdepartment Radio Advisory Committee (IRAC), NTIA and IRAC could agree to certain sharing parameters with the amateur service. NTIA, in a letter last week to the FCC Office of Engineering & Technology, listed 5 discrete channel center frequencies that would be available for sharing with the amateur service under certain power limits and emission modes. “Although this is less spectrum than the American Radio Relay League petition requested, this is the best we can do pending a definition of homeland security HF requirements,” Wentland wrote. Last year, NTIA told the FCC that it opposed adding a secondary allocation for amateurs in the HF band but it could support another part of the proposal that would create a low-frequency allocation for the amateur service by adding a secondary allocation at 135.7-137.8 kHz. At that time it didn’t rule out reaching some type of accommodation, such as that outlined in last week’s letter, to address NTIA concerns about the extent to which federal agencies used that part of the HF band for emergency services, including communications support for the Defense Dept. and Coast Guard.
One of the federal wireless efforts now under the DHS is the Wireless Public Safety Interoperable Communications Project (Project Safecom), which established public safety interoperability as a goal after Sept. 11. The project was designed to be a single point of contact for all federal wireless communications efforts for public safety, examining issues such as spectrum availability for interoperable communications among public safety agencies and coordination of existing federal wireless programs. One area of continuing debate for Project Safecom planning efforts, which surfaced at a meeting Fri., concerns who fits into the definition of first responders.