Sprint Forms Public Safety Committee as It Works to Resolve 800 MHz Disputes
Sprint Nextel -- under fire from public safety groups as not being responsive enough to their concerns about 800 MHz rebanding -- formed a public safety panel to advise it as the retuning moves forward, the carrier announced Thurs. Creation of the committee comes as rebanding begins for the NPSPAC channels, a process expected to be much more complex than the retuning that has occurred thus far. “Is this cosmetic? Sure it’s cosmetic, but it might help,” said one public safety source: “Like a lot of things, maybe it should have happened a long time ago.”
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Sprint asked 3 public safety officials, Stephen Browne of Denver, David Seidel of San Bernardino County, Cal., and Chief Charles Werner of the Charlottesville, Va., Fire Dept., to serve on the committee. A Denver official was picked in part because the city moved early to address interference concerns, sources said. San Bernardino, the largest county by size in the U.S., faces one of the most complex rebandings in the U.S. Werner is outspoken on communications issues.
Werner told us he was asked to be a “sounding board” for Sprint Nextel and to help the carrier communicate with public safety groups. “A lot of what I'm hearing is still uncertainty in the process -- what will be paid and how will it be paid and those types of questions,” he said. “There’s also uncertainty as to who do we need in terms of consultants and attorneys to help in this process… It’s just a very new world that we have to journey into.”
Seidel -- retired from running the county public safety communications system -- describes himself as “an ex-cop with a bad attitude” and said he was surprised when Sprint called. Seidel told us he will stay on the committee as long as he feels Sprint is listening. “It has to benefit public safety,” he said: “I'm not in the commercial world. I'm not interested in being a consultant.”
Govt. procurement, especially of police radios and public safety equipment, is often not well understood by industry, Seidel said. “Nextel has the business side of communications down pretty well but what they don’t have is an insight on how government works,” he said. “If I want to buy a new radio, I can’t just call Motorola and buy a new radio. I have to ask ‘are there other options?'”
“There’s been a lot of complaints that Sprint Nextel doesn’t seem to have a good enough grasp of some of the real operational issues,” said Robert Gurss, dir.-legal & govt. affairs at APCO: “This committee is one of their attempts to try to address these concerns. I think it will help.” Gurss said in the early negotiations public safety agencies had a similar complaint. “The Nextel negotiator shows up and crosses numbers off,” he said: “They say that’s too much, instead of asking why do you really need to do this.”
“They reached out to me and others to ask if this was a good idea,” said Harlin McEwen, a former police chief and FBI official who represents public safety on communications issues. “They clearly have been feeling come heat. Some of the public safety agencies have expressed concerns Nextel doesn’t understand their needs.”
McEwen said Sprint, working with the FCC, public safety and the 800 MHz Transition Administrator, has made progress, but concerns remain about the progress of the retuning. “It’s a very complex, difficult proceeding,” he said: “There were lots of things we didn’t anticipate. Little by little, we're sorting them out.”
Sandy Edwards, vp-spectrum, for Sprint said the group “will ensure that we better understand the special considerations and challenges” faced by public safety during retuning. “We are hopeful that public safety officials across the country will come to rely on members of the advisory board as an additional channel for sharing their thoughts and concerns as reconfiguration moves ahead as well as for facilitating communications among themselves and Sprint Nextel,” he said.