Utilities Should Get Access to FirstNet Spectrum, Government Panelists Say
As lawmakers grapple with the details of the nation’s first wireless broadband network for first responders, it may be “the chance of a lifetime to figure out how utilities can be integrated into this as emergency responders,” Rural Utilities Service Administrator Jonathan Adelstein told attendees of a Utilities Telecom Council conference on critical infrastructure Tuesday. There was broad consensus among the government panelists that during emergencies, utilities act as first responders and should get access to the first responder network.
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With the commercial spectrum increasingly crowded, the “enormous capacity” of FirstNet will be a great opportunity for public utilities to get access to spectrum, Adelstein said. Electric utility assets are “clearly” critical infrastructure, and RUS believes electric utilities should have access to FirstNet, he said. Adelstein also encouraged building more wireless infrastructure on federal lands to reuse the existing spectrum. “God doesn’t give you any more spectrum, but we can find ways of taking spectrum that exists, and reusing it again and again by building in infrastructure,” he said.
Utilities need decent spectrum because “they are right behind the first responders,” said Ray Baum, senior policy advisor to the House Communications Subcommittee. When power lines are down, the police can’t do anything until that’s taken care of, and so giving utilities access to the first responder spectrum is the “best option.” Public safety now has 34 MHz in the “very nice beachfront spectrum in the 700 MHz band.” That’s more than any commercial carrier has, he said. “We've now given public safety carte blanche in the spectrum space."
There is potential down the road for spectrum sharing between federal and commercial entities via cognitive radios and dynamic spectrum management, but “we don’t want them to go to the sharing with commercial users until we've exhausted every means we can” to get them off the spectrum, Baum said. Right now the federal government has no natural incentive to get off the spectrum, so “we have to push as hard as we can,” he said. “We support the efforts of the White House to do that, and we hope they're more successful than some members have been."
Spectrum sharing has been going on in some form for years, said Tom Power, deputy chief technology officer for telecommunications in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. On the government side, agencies ask for spectrum, and they are limited to “what you need, when you need it, and where you need it,” he said. “That has the agencies all jammed in together, which is in a way a very efficient way to do it.” In terms of sharing with commercial users, Power said the government has done that for years in “exclusion zones.” For example, if the Department of Defense is using spectrum in some locations around the country, they can “put a circle” around those locations for DoD use, and make the rest of the spectrum available for commercial use, he said. But there has to be an emphasis on shrinking those zones, he said, and the government has “got to be a lot more thoughtful” on drawing the “fine lines."
FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said she probably has “more sensitivity than some” on utility needs “because I come from a state regulatory perspective and spent most of my time on the electrical equipment side.” She encouraged utilities to “not let up” in their lobbying for access to dedicated spectrum. “If it should be, it will be.”