700 MHz Public Spectrum at Work on the Gulf Spill

The FCC reported that  emergency agencies in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama were able to stitch together a 700 MHz radio network to connect first responders and government workers.   This was an ad hoc telecom effort to, in effect, route callers into the right conference group.

The agencies in these Gulf states created a workable, but still somewhat primitive (compared to what’s coming), radio trunking system to share available frequencies more efficiently and allocate them into separate radio talk groups.

A better solution is in the works.

In 2007, the FCC decided to free up part of the 700 MHz band (formerly used in analogy TV) for use in a national interoperable broadband network for public safety.  The goal was formally detailed in the National Broadband Plan (see chapter 16), which the FCC released to Congress in March.

Some of the sticky points of interoperabilty and spectrum sharing with commercial license holders are outlined in the NBP, and will be resolved by a government standards body called ERIC (Emergency Interoperability Center).

To get a sense of the in-the-trenches features that a wireless broadband public safety network would support,  parts of the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council’s report are worth taking a look at it.

I took a quick scan to find there’s more emphasis in a public safety wireless network on one-to-many communications,  “hailing” numbers at dispatch centers,  and use of location information to track workers.  It is a vision document and points the way towards really using available cellular  technology to share information more effectively than is currently the case.

Let’s hope the Gulf oil accident doesn’t put too much of a burden on the radio network that’s being used to coordinate the response.

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