Government Technology - December 2008 - (Page DC12)

front of us. If we have to wait for the service provider, we’re not sure if this will be a viable option.” Todd Sander, director of Government Technology’s Digital Communities program, organized an event in Miami in June 2008 that gathered representatives from major metropolitan areas. The meeting revealed that emergency responders nationwide had the same issues. Fundamentally there was tension between the proﬁt-driven focus of commercial enterprises and the public safety goals of emergency responders. “We had little conﬁdence that something useful would come out of that for the city — a commercial-quality network likely would not be good enough in an emergency,” Sander said. Subsequently public safety ofﬁcials and CIOs from many of the largest U.S. cities and counties banded together through the Digital Communities 700 MHz working group to protest the FCC’s new proposed rules for the 700 MHz D Block auction. In a letter to FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin, they argued that the FCC plan to pair the public safety spectrum with the commercially auctioned “D Block” of spectrum “will fall far short of satisfying a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ﬁx the weaknesses in the core structure of public safety spectrum.” And they added, “We do not believe that the current plans to auction the D Block will in any way be a solution to the public safety wireless broadband needs in our communities.” Efﬁciencies are a main reason why local decision-makers are so interested in the 700 MHz band. “Convergence and interoperability are the future of municipal IT,” Geddes wrote. “It is the ability for every city agency to access the information they need, wherever they are. It is the ability for any municipal worker to take advantage of existing assets or new technology resources to perform their functions effectively.” “Optimizing resources is a high priority, as are speed of deployment and ease of maintenance,” Oates said. “We need to deliver data to public safety equipment in ambulances, ﬁre apparatus and After Hurricane Katrina, many of the lessons learned during disaster recovery efforts were reported to the FCC. cruisers — we need a broadband soluIn New York, Boston, San Francisco tion for the mobile world.” He said the and elsewhere, ofﬁcials are eager to city examined Wi-Fi and 4.9 GHz radios, deploy public safety networks. By setbut they aren’t adequate for next-gen- ting basic requirements, the FCC could eration networking. The failure of the ensure that these systems would interﬁrst D Block auction was problematic operate across municipal boundaries because it slowed down a process that without further slowing the speed of many feel has been dragging. “We have implementation. “We already operate an a sense of urgency,” Oates said. 800 MHz wireless network — we have the Boston’s Denning concurred that towers and backhaul infrastructure in the city is ready to deploy these next- place. It would just be a matter of buying generation communications networks the radios, installing them and connectimmediately. “We have a fairly good ing them to our backhaul,” Fraser said. idea for the propagation characteristics “The locations we already have selected because of our 800 MHz network [and would equate very closely to the layout want a 700 MHz network] within the you would need for a 700 MHz system.” next 24 months,” Denning said. In the Cosgrave sums up the concerns of meantime, as Oates said, “We’ll do this many public safety ofﬁcials: “We’re very with 2.4 or 4.9 [GHz] if we can’t get 700 uncomfortable about [the auction proMHz, [but] height and penetration into cess]; it’s set up for carriers and doesn’t buildings would be greatly improved really meet the basic standards for public with 700 MHz.” safety networks.” Although municipal authorities are After Hurricane Katrina, many of the ready to begin building next-generation lessons learned during disaster recovery networks right away, in the end, it may efforts were reported to the FCC. Despite come down to political expediency rather those proposed recommendations, local than public safety. Between the recent municipalities were forced to implement ﬁnancial meltdown that has undermined suboptimal emergency wireless soluattempts to auction spectrum licenses tions while waiting for the FCC to move and the political transitions happening forward with the 700 MHz public safety in Washington, D.C., it’s unclear how band proceedings. In the end, many quickly the FCC will move to create this emergency response wireless networks interoperable public safety band. remain noninteroperable — worrying Municipal representatives suggest ofﬁcials who are all too aware of the conthat the FCC set some basic interoper- sequences of noncommunication. ability standards and then let local governments build the networks they need Sascha Meinrath is a research director at the immediately. Although the FCC faces New America Foundation and a regular a mandate to auction some of the spec- contributor to Digital Communities magatrum, many municipal IT professionals zine. He worked with the Yale University feel that the FCC should provide early Fire Marshal’s Ofﬁce and coordinated the access to the spectrum for those com- Hurricane Katrina Community Wireless munities that are ready to deploy now. Emergency Response Initiative. 12 DIGITAL COMMUNITIES DECEMBER 08 PHOTO BY MARVIN NAUMAN/FEMA

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - December 2008

Government Technology - December 2008 Contents Point of View Four Questions for... On the Scene Big Picture Year in Review Who Controls Your Network? Paper Makes a Comeback Halting Meth Abuse Spectrum Up Close signal:noise Digital Communities Contents Becoming a Digital Community Rethinking 700 MHz Smart Grids: Powering the Future Gearing Up for Crime 2.0 Software Predicts Crime Local Portals on the Red Carpet More Than Just a Pretty Face

Government Technology - December 2008

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