Public Safety to Get Cash Faster for 800 MHz Rebanding
Sprint will be quicker to reimburse some public safety systems for planning costs involved in 800 MHz rebanding, said the 800 MHz Transition Administrator, major public safety groups and Sprint Nextel Tues. Planning reimbursement has been a sticking point as returning of public safety radios under a 2004 800 MHz rebanding agreement begins. Public safety systems will have access to a “fast track” by which Sprint will speed approval of any licensee’s planning funds request under $55 per subscriber unit, the parties said. The TA subsequently will review handling of the requests.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
“We have looked at the data of the number of planning funding agreements that have come through the TA and been approved and the range is what you would expect. It is a wide range,” Brett Haan, dir. of the TA, told us Tues.: “At $55 per subscriber unit you will be able to capture well over 50% of the public safety entities who may require planning funding.”
Addressing systems with relatively low planning costs helps on several levels, Hahn said: “To those entities who fall into that 50% or more, it gives them a pretty clear path if they need it to get started and to go forward and they know what they need to submit to the TA. And it will enable us, the TA, and public safety leadership and also Sprint Nextel, to focus on licensees whose complexity or unique situations might require attention.”
The TA quarterly report, due shortly, will show solid progress among the Wave 1 and Wave 2 licensees that are in process of retuning, Hahn said.
“This highly dynamic reconfiguration process will face future challenges,” said Wanda McCarley, Assn. of Public- Safety Communications Officials pres.: “These revisions in the planning funding process are indicative of the progress that can be achieved when all parties in the process are willing and able to address these challenges in a cooperative spirit.”
In Jan., 6 public safety groups griped to the FCC that many of their members were having trouble getting Sprint to reimburse them for 800 MHz reband planning (CD Jan 31 p6). Those signatories signed onto the fast track agreement. The groups are: APCO, Assn. of Chiefs of Police, International Assn. of Fire Chiefs, Major Cities Chiefs Assn., Major Counties Sheriffs Assn. and National Sheriffs’ Assn.