APCO, NENA Advocate Public Safety Spectrum Trust Reforms

The PSST and its relationship with advisor Cyren Call remain an FCC focus. The PSST and Cyren Call reported in an ex parte filing about a meeting Thursday between Harlin McEwen, chairman of the PSST, Morgan O'Brien, chairman of Cyren Call, the PSST’s advisor, and Commissioner Michael Copps and Bruce Gottlieb, his wireless advisor.

“All the public safety groups are moving in the same direction on the overall goals,” a wireless industry attorney said Monday. “The differences appear to be in terms of internal management issues as opposed to the goals of what the overall network should look like and the bigger picture issues.”

APCO said in its comments it doesn’t believe the PBSL should act as a kind of MVNO to manage the network while other companies sell services. “It would add duplication and costs that could become a burden for both the PSBL and, more importantly, end users,” APCO said. “The MVNO model also imposes responsibilities on the PSBL for which it is likely to be ill-equipped. Nobody within the public safety community has ever managed a network of this scale or complexity. To accept such a responsibility, the PSBL would need to rely heavily upon commercial contractors, and somehow provide sufficient oversight to ensure that the contractors are serving public safety’s interests.”

APCO said the PSBL should receive some compensation from the eventual D-block licensee. “We do not believe that the D Block licensee should be able to charge public safety users commercial market rates and make no payment for its use of the public safety spectrum,” APCO said. Deciding pricing is difficult, APCO said. It suggested negotiations among the various parties under FCC oversight. APCO suggested the FCC put in place strict conflict of interest rules for PSBL, specifically prohibiting “its advisors from engaging in business activities resulting from the advice provided to the PSBL.” APCO said this is “especially dangerous if the PSST board lacks sufficient knowledge and expertise to ’second guess’ the advice it receives.”

APCO said the current broad structure of the PSST is fundamentally flawed, putting too much power in too few hands. “The large size of the PSST board has led to over-reliance on the chairman/CEO and a three-person executive committee (the chairman, vice-chairman, and secretary/treasurer) that exercises a substantial degree of discretion without sufficient opportunities for input from other board members,” APCO said. “A smaller board would allow for a more inclusive decision-making process.”

APCO also questioned whether the PSST has the expertise required to make some key decisions. “Very few of the current board members have direct experience in designing or operating public safety communication systems,” APCO said. “There is also little or no expertise from the fields of business, finance, or communications technology, all of which are critical to the functions of the PSBL.”

APCO also said the PSST board needs to differentiate itself from the governing board of the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council. “NPSTC serves a fundamentally different role than the PSBL,” APCO said. “NPSTC brings together various public safety organizations to address primarily technical issues regarding public safety radio communications, while the PSBL must address broader network management, system design, and financial matters in a fiduciary manner and under supervision of the FCC.”

The National Emergency Number Association agreed with APCO on the need to reform the structure of the PBSL board and how it operates. “It is NENA’s position that all processes and procedures can be improved,” NENA said. “We also believe that the structure of the Board should be modified to require a composition of Board members with relevant experience in building/managing large-scale wireless networks, financial expertise and communications technology.”

The PSST in its extensive comments on the future of the D-block disagreed with APCO and NENA that the FCC should make major structural changes to the PSST and PSBL. The PSST said it was surprised that the FCC had asked a battery of questions about how the structure should change. The FCC through its second report and order “established detailed requirements for the structure of the PSBL, the composition of its Board of Directors and even certain provisions of its enabling and operating documents, all of which subsequently were presented to the FCC for review as part of the PSST’s application to the FCC for the PSBL authority,” the PSST said. “As reflected in that application, the PSST is structured in strict compliance with all applicable FCC requirements, not to mention applicable IRS rules respecting governance.”

The International Association of Fire Fighters, meanwhile, expressed deep concerns about whether a private/public partnership would work as expected. “We are concerned that the public safety licensee will encounter less than responsive service from the potential D Block licensee when dealing with public safety requirements regarding expansion, performance and maintenance of the network,” the group said. “Some fire departments which currently rely on the private sector for data transmission have reported a lack of responsiveness to public safety needs under their current networks.”

IAFF said in any system where public safety and commercial interests must be balanced, commercial interests would inevitably receive preferable treatment. “It is not unreasonable to assume that commercial usage of the network would quickly outpace public safety usage, simply due to the potential number of users,” the group said. “Such a scenario would provide commercial users with significant leverage in negotiating price, access to spectrum, customer service and equipment preferences, to name a few.”