I am calling to ask my Congressman to cosponsor H.R. 5081. I believe the Congressman needs to cosponsor the bill because...
Events such as the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina revealed that the inability of public safety users to communicate effectively across local, State, tribal, and Federal government departments and jurisdictions impairs the ability of the United States to respond to and mitigate large-scale national security incidents and natural disasters, as well as impedes the day-to-day work of public safety agencies.
Nearly nine years after September 11, the lack of interoperable communications continues to be a major problem for our first responders. This is not acceptable. Our Nation has spent billions of dollars to upgrade communications systems but many of our public safety agencies still lack interoperability. The problem continues to be that public safety agencies around the country are operating radios on more than five different spectrum bands and using non-compatible equipment.
The Broadband for First Responders Act of 2010 (H.R. 5081) establishes a new vision for solving our nation's public safety interoperable communications problems. H.R. 5081 implements a vision that ensures first responders have the newest advances in technology to get the job done and save lives. H.R. 5081 fosters a vision that will change the way our first responders communicate in the future and provides them communications equipment that is economical and dependable. But most of all, H.R. 5081 provides public safety agencies enough contiguous spectrum to enable the convergence of voice, video, and data communications on one network. H.R. 5081 ensures the network will have enough capacity and speed to allow public safety the ability to use the latest equipment and applications to do their jobs, and in a secure environment.
Today, public safety uses a patchwork of spectrum assigned to them over decades through a disjointed, piecemeal approach of last resort. The long-term vision provided by H.R. 5081 is to migrate today's public safety communications systems to a robust broadband network that provides for spectral efficiency and effectiveness and meets the mission-critical and day-to-day voice, video and data needs of America's first responders. The converged data, video, and voice network(s) must be built to survive most natural and manmade disasters yet flexible enough to support a variety of government applications. H.R. 5081 will allow public safety agencies to migrate their communications systems to a converged voice and data network on a common frequency band using a common technology platform, which will resolve many of today's public safety ongoing interoperability challenges.
With advances in technology, public safety has identified an increasing need to access data and video networks during all emergency incidents. Law enforcement needs access to streaming video, surveillance networks capable of identifying known terrorists through the use of video analytics, criminal records, automated license plate recognition and biometric technologies including mobile fingerprint and iris identification to prevent and respond to criminal activities. Fire services need access to building blue prints, health-monitoring sensors and GPS tracking systems in order to save lives. Emergency medical services needs access to telemedicine, high-resolution video and patient records to reduce the time it takes to deliver medical services at the scene of a incident such as a car crash on a highway. Critical-infrastructure service providers need to be able to coordinate their responses to restore power and telecommunications services during large-scale incidents. Federal government operations, including the U.S. Marshals Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Customs Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Department of Homeland Security and various other federal agencies need to access data networks during large-scale incidents to coordinate Federal assistance with State and local response and recovery operations. These are just a few of the applications and services that will need to exist on a public safety broadband network. Unfortunately, the hard-reality depends greatly on the amount of spectrum that is available for public safety broadband services. Many of these applications require considerable bandwidth and speed. H.R. 5081 will ensure that public safety has enough spectrum to do what it needs.
In 2007, the FCC adopted a Report & Order approving the issuance of a single nationwide license for 10 MHz of 700 MHz public safety spectrum re-designated for broadband use to deploy a nationwide public safety grade broadband network. This allocation only meets the basic data needs for public safety in many of our nation's most populated urban and suburban areas. In cities like New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Dallas, Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami, Las Vegas, and Seattle most, if not all, of this spectrum will be consumed by local law enforcement and fire services which will leave little or no capacity for other services such as telemedicine and government operations.
One of the most important short- and mid-term goals for public safety is to begin using voice, video, and data applications on the broadband network within five to seven years, but without the allocation of additional spectrum, public safety agencies will not be able to fully deploy or use the next generation of interoperable IP based mission-critical communications technologies. That is why it is imperative that Congress passes H.R. 5081.
The FCC has acknowledged that public safety will need more spectrum and are discussing future allocations, however any future allocations will be outside of the 700 MHz band, creating new interoperability problems, increasing costs and requiring public safety to replace 700 MHz broadband equipment prematurely. We cannot let this happen to public safety again. We need to learn from the mistakes of the past and make sure we don't repeat them when we are building out a new broadband network.
We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past. We cannot afford to piece meal the spectrum allocation again. We have a one-time chance to do the right thing and we need to do it right now. We need to make sure public safety has the contiguous spectrum needed to build the next generation of interoperable communications systems of the future.
That is why Congress needs to quickly pass H.R. 5081 and allocate an adequate amount of contiguous broadband spectrum for public safety use to provide the highest speed and quality for transmitting mission-critical voice, video and data services throughout their jurisdictions. The propagation characteristics of the spectrum that is allocated must be consistent with the current 700 MHz allocation to allow for a consistent radio frequency footprint and cost-affective deployment.
Congress has an opportunity to act and to do the right thing for public safety and remove the auction requirement for the 700 MHz D Block of spectrum, and allocate it for public safety use. That is what H.R. 5081 does. This bill looks to establish the law upon which a contagious 20 MHz public safety broadband network could be built to ensure our first responders have the tools they need to communicate day-to-day and during large-scale disasters.
H.R. 5081 allows public safety agencies to partner with commercial carriers and critical infrastructure services to reduce the cost of building out a network and allows commercial carriers to use the excess capacity on the network to offer secure and reliable broadband services to their customers.
H.R. 5081 will also requires the build out of the network comply with technical and operational standards to insure interoperability, priority and roaming. These standards would also ensure that the networks are able to evolve with technological developments in the commercial market place. In other words, public safety communications technology is not going to be left behind when consumer technologies evolve.
The vision of H.R. 5081 is to ensure that our nation can build a national public safety broadband network that meets the needs of our courageous and fearless first responders who put their lives on the line for us everyday. Our country owes it to them to make sure the mistakes of September 11 are not repeated.
