Over the past several years, stories of public safety’s pursuit of spectrum in the 700 MHz band — the so-called D Block — that would provide the foundation for a nationwide wireless broadband network have all but consumed mission-critical communications news. Today, as Contributing Editor Donny Jackson reports, Congress has made that network possible by reallocating the D Block to public safety and authorizing billions of federal dollars to build it. (See story below.)
Six years ago, our reaction to Morgan O’Brien’s suggestion at IWCE 2006 that such a network not only was needed but also was possible was twofold: (1) What a great concept! Public safety needs and deserves broadband; and (2) What complete lunacy! Public safety doesn’t want broadband, and Congress would never go for it.
But O’Brien had planted a seed and that seed began, ever so slowly, to germinate and take root. Another notion was floated: What if Congress gave public safety the D Block and allowed it to control the network? More lunacy! How will this sector ever agree on how to govern a nationwide network when it can’t even come to regional consensus on anything — despite the fact the federal government, through the SAFECOM grants, provided financial incentive to do so?
