700 MHz Awarded to Public Safety - Now What?

Lumped into this weeks Payroll Tax Cut bill was an allocation of the long contested 10 MHz of spectrum referred to as the 700 MHz D Block.  The future of the D block has been in limbo since the 2008 spectrum auctions, but  this week Congress and the Obama Administration finally passed legislation that allocated the D Block to Public Safety for the construction of a nationwide LTE network.    Congress also kicked in an additional $7 billion of tax payer dollars to build the network and another $300 million for R&D for the network.

But you can be sure, that much like ObamaCare, there are sill many unknowns.  And public safety representatives are already saying $7 Billion isn't enough!  No one has yet thought or talked about where the money will come from to operate and maintain the system (but that money has to come from only one source and that is the US Taxpayer)  and nobody yet knows who is in charge of planning, designing, and managing the network buildout and operation.

However I am sure that this topic will dominate next weeks discussion at IWCE and for many months to come in the various halls of the lobbyist and equipment manufacturers who will no doubt play a major role in shaping the success of the network.

I expect the Public Safety Industry hasn't seen this much excitement since the 800 Re-banding plan was announced a few years ago.  BTW, anyone know how re-banding is going?  It's finished, right?

Marc

Upper 700 MHz Band Plan - The Public Safety D Block

The Public Safety D Block is actually two 5 MHz blocks of spectrum in the Upper 700 MHz band between 758 MHz to 763 MHz and 788 MHz to 793 MHz as shown below:

The LightSquared Whine Continues as the Commission suspends their waiver to use the 1.6 GHz band

After a very long and very public battle the Federal Communications Commission finally agreed that the laws of physics indeed could not be repealed, even with Obama's magical powers, and notified LightSquared that their waiver to use the 1.6 GHz spectrum will be suspended indefinitely thus ending LightSquared's plan to build a wholesale terrestrial based LTE network in the 1.6 GHz band. 


The surprise in this announcement is that the Commission actually did the right thing and went against the political pressure of LightSquared.   


But don't think that just because the FCC has ruled that this is the last you will hear from LightSquared.  Within hours of the announcement by the Commission, LightSquared launched their,  "we have been a victim of pure politics" campaign.    


Jeff Carlisle, LightSquared’s executive vice president for regulatory affairs and public policy, wrote on the company’s blog this week that the GPS industry had apparently become “too big to fail,” seeking protection from the federal government for its own mistakes.

“GPS manufacturers have been selling devices that listen into frequencies outside of their assigned spectrum band — namely into LightSquared’s licensed band,” Mr. Carlisle wrote. “The GPS industry has leveraged years of insider relationships and massive lobbying dollars to make sure that they don’t have to fix the problem they created.”

LightSquared's whine continued threatening legal acton and ramping up its lobbying efforts to attempt to gain access to spectrum for their network through a spectrum swap with federal agencies.  

The saga continues but never underestimate the power of having powerful friends (the President of the United States) as an investor in your company trying to make a $20 + billion spectrum play!  

Marc