Most Public Safety Agencies Say Leaving T-Band Will Hurt Interoperability
Forcing public safety agencies to move off the T-band will have an impact on communications interoperability, according to early results of a poll released Thursday at the quarterly meeting of the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council. Public safety got the 700 MHz D-block in the February spectrum law, but in return had to give up the T-band, heavily used in 11 major metropolitan areas in the U.S. In August, NPSTC sent out a questionnaire (http://xrl.us/bnkk2a) to gather information as the group prepares a report (CD Aug 14 p6).
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New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Boston and Washington are among the major cities now using the T-band at 470-512 MHz. The legislation requires public safety users to clear the band within nine years so it can be resold in an FCC auction.
"The NPSTC T-Band Working Group is gathering the facts about how many portables, mobiles and base stations would be affected, how many are narrowbanded and how many are not, if there is any spectrum to move to in each market,” Harlin McEwen, chairman of the International Association of Chiefs of Police Communications & Technology Committee, told us after the workshop. “We need an estimate of the total cost to move if there is any spectrum to move to and then make a judgment as to what is the best course of action. The group believes we must have a better sense of the situation before we can decide what to do."
David Furth, deputy chief of the FCC Public Safety Bureau, told NPTSC the FCC is likely to issue a public notice soon on T-band issues. “We think it’s important that the public safety community and those incumbents that are in the T-band put their heads together to come up with the best ideas they can about the challenges that they face in order to comply with the spectrum act provisions on T-band,” he said. “We have had a lot of informal dialogue with licensees in the T-band and have been trying to gather as much information as we can.”
The issue is significant enough to NPSTC that the group held a T-band workshop prior to the start of the meeting. NPSTC is still gathering data. So far, 150 agencies that use the band have responded with 83.5 percent saying that loss of the band will affect interoperable communications. The dominant user is law enforcement, followed by fire departments, EMS and public works, the survey found. Of the agencies that use the band, 95 percent said they use it to coordinate daily activities and in emergencies, while 75 percent say they use the T-band to communicate with other agencies. Most communications (79.8 percent) are voice-only while 19.3 percent also use the T-band for data.
Most (69.7 percent) said their T-band operations have already been converted to narrow-band operations, while 17.6 percent said they have no plans to convert them from wide to narrow band and 12.6 percent said a conversion is still in the works.
"We expected that it was going to be used by public safety first responders for daily activities” and the survey bears that out, said Joe Ross of consultant firm Televate, co-chair of NPSTC’s T-Band Working Group. “I think we knew that, but it’s good to reinforce that assumption.” Ross warned that agencies won’t have an easy time moving off the T-band. “We all need to think through the process,” he said.
Ross said he’s not sure why so many agencies have spent money to narrowband their T-band operations. In April, the FCC Wireless and Public Safety bureaus suspended a Jan. 1 requirement that private land mobile radio licensees in the T-band migrate to narrowband technology (CD April 27 p13). Other meeting attendees said some have migrated as part of overall improvements in their systems or to stay current with their neighbors or because T-band systems are integrated with other systems that still face the mandate.
NPSTC officials said they plan to share the results of the survey with the FCC and Congress when it’s finished later this year.