Q&A: APCO on the D block

Federal Communication Commission plans to auction a 10 megahertz swath of the 700 MHz block--the so called D block--don't sit well with the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials.

The FCC's national broadband plan calls for selling the D block to wireless carriers, which would offer first responders priority access to the spectrum when emergency data networks get overloaded. APCO would rather that first responders get outright license to the spectrum for themselves and give private sector carriers access to it on their own terms. 

Recently FierceGovernmentIT talked with APCO President Richard Mirgon about the D block and government plans to build a nationwide data network for first responders.

FGIT: What's the status of plans to build a nationwide interoperable wireless broadband network?

Mirgon: The status is it's still in its design phase, for lack of a better term. We need the additional 10 megahertz of the D block to give us sufficient bandwidth to deal with high end technology today and future technology for tomorrow.

Until we can resolve that with the FCC, we're still stuck trying to acquire the spectrum we need to move forward. The other issue is we are still without funding. Congress needs to step forward and provide some sort of funding, or the ability to generate funding, through some sort of user-fee, to build such a network.

FGIT: How much funding?

Mirgon: We believe the FCC numbers are probably pretty close at $16 billion.

Part of what that's predicated on is being able to execute within this next year, to get the spectrum to get the funding. Because that's predicated on doing some partnerships with the carriers on the use of that D block, and that's predicated on being able to do some joint ventures with the wireless carriers on cell site deployment and usage of power space and those kinds of things.

FGIT: What's wrong with current FCC plans to auction off the D block?

Mirgon: The first thing that's wrong with it, from a policy perspective, is that the carriers don't really want public safety, high reliability customers. It's very costly for them. It's a very low return on their dollar. Our needs, to be able to access spectrum at critical times would potentially dump their customers off their network, causing not only a p.r. problem but potentially lost revenue.

FGIT: Doesn't the plan call for first responders paying for that right of priority access to D block spectrum?

Mirgon; Yeah, but paying for the right to use spectrum and a commercial carrier willing to give you access to that spectrum are two different things.

My simple argument is if the carriers wanted to do this, why aren't they doing it now? Why haven't they offered public safety the ability to pre-empt and to go into additional spectrum?

I was talking to some folks last week who are trying to deploy a mobile computer system in a jurisdiction, where the carrier is saying "Look, you only get so much bandwidth per unit," and they're saying "but we lose a lot of features when you restrict us like that." And the said "Sorry, that's the way it is."

So why haven't the carriers come out and said "We've got a program here that allows you do to do all the things that the FCC does, and there's the price for it, on our existing networks"? Well, they haven't done it, which leads me to believe, they don't want to do it.

FGIT: But the previous attempt to auction off the D block didn't work...

Mirgon: There were a lot of problems with that last auction.  There were some conditions placed on that auction that caused the failure of the auction that maybe shouldn't have been there. Part of that is that there was a condition that carriers put some money up front--that they potentially could have lost, if they didn't come up with a contractual agreement with public safety trust.

Some of the reliability we asked for was beyond the level that the public safety even builds to. We wanted greater levels of reliability than what's built into a commercial network, but I think there was some language in there that it was well beyond what a reasonable person, even public safety, would build to, and that caused some apprehension.

The way I've heard people sum it up is that there were just too many unknowns. Too many questions still left to be answered, and the carriers didn't feel comfortable in investing in it.

FGIT: So what is the solution, your solution?

Mirgon: We believe that Congress should allocated the spectrum to public safety, with conditions that we partner with the carriers through an RFP process. In that process, the carriers would come to public safety and compete for business. One carrier would offer maybe one level of reliability, another would offer a different level, maybe one would have a measured approach. But in an RFP, it's the carriers that are coming to public safety, saying that "We can provide the service, on the D block, and we can use the D block when you're not using it, for commercial purposes, and here's how we're going to protect public safety's interests." And then, the carriers will either provide funding to public safety for such things as equipment, or there would be an exchange of services.

In other words--and all this is theoretical--but potentially a carrier could offer to build out to a certain density level in exchange for the use of the spectrum.

FGIT: Isn't that dual use of the D block precisely one of the objections to the FCC plan?

Mirgon: It's not the dual use, it's the control of the spectrum. Right now there are no guarantees that public safety will get access to the spectrum, when they need it, at the level that they need it. What [the FCC] is talking about is doing some rule setting that could potentially create that process. But there are times that the commission will create rules that the carriers will go to court on and they end up winning the battle.

FGIT: So you're not against sharing that spectrum with the private sector.

Mirgon: Correct. It's how you share it. We believe that to protect public safety's interest, and to protect the public, we should hold the license.

FGIT: What's special about 700 MHz?

Mirgon: Its propagation characteristics. It has very unique characteristics, in that it has fairly good building penetration, along with some good penetration of larger terrain areas. When you look at a spectrum that's to be used in a rural and an urban area, it fits that bill. Once you get too high in the spectrum, such as 2 gigahertz, it's very good for high density, but it doesn't work well in rural areas. It just doesn't travel as far, you need more sites, it gets absorbed too easily by vegetation.

The reason the D block is important to us is that when you look at building a network, you've got a transmit site and you've got a receive site. So you have to have air channels. Currently, the block we have at 700 MHz [the public safety block], the only other 10 MHz that it could be pared with that would have the same propagation characteristics, that could use the same RF equipment, is the D block.

The FCC has talked about potentially giving us spectrum in future years. But that spectrum would be outside of 700 MHz, could be as high as close to 2 GHz, could be in the low 600 Mhz. That creates a different radiation pattern for all your transmitters and receivers. You create technical difficulties in trying to match that up. Additionally, not only are the propagation characteristics different, but your penetration is, also.

The other thing I want to make clear is that we're not in total opposition to the broadband plan. There's a lot of very good elements in it. Our argument is that it is a much better plan if you allocate the D block to public safety, create the partnership with commercial entities that way.

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