Communications Insights: Trends and Cool Stuff

My report on Public Safety and Security spectrum use in Europe publishes today. In the report, we marshal the policy and technological arguments for a reallocation of further dedicated spectrum for mission critical PSS communication from the transition to digital terrestrial television, the so called Digital Dividend. The website for the study is: http://www.public-safety-first.eu/. For the first time since I served on the FCC’s Hurricane Katrina response team, I have felt that my work has served a critical societal need. Yet, as an American who is used to being constantly bombarded with the need for homeland security, it was a bit surprising to me that PSS communications has received little attention in the discussion regarding how to redistribute this radio spectrum. So, it has been personally rewarding to influence the debate in at least some small way.

Insight: PSS service responders provide us with indispensable police, fire and other emergency services and the provision of emergency services extends beyond the social contract and invokes a moral obligation to protect life, welfare, and property. In order to enable the necessary broadband communications for next generation PSS communications, they will require two additional 15 MHz-wide blocks in the Digital Dividend bands. This allocation is on par with the 24 MHz which the US is reallocating from its DTV transition. A reallocation to PSS use cannot come soon enough since it may take more than ten years, to plan and deploy these networks.

Tags: 700 MHz, Digital Dividend, PSS, Public Safety and Security, Spectrum

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 4th, 2008 at 11:42 pm and is filed under Wireless Communications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.