700 MHz NPRM Expected to Get Vote at January Meeting
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is teeing up an order that takes on a number of lingering public safety communications issues possibly for the Jan. 25 meeting, industry officials said Wednesday. The meeting will be the first since last week’s meeting, in which the FCC approved controversial net neutrality rules. Orders are expected to circulate among the other commissioner offices Tuesday, three weeks before the meeting date.
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The Public Safety Bureau has put together a notice of proposed rulemaking that asks several interoperability questions but does not inquire about the future use of the 700 MHz D-block. The National Broadband Plan’s recommendation that the D-block be auctioned for commercial use has met with lingering opposition from many public safety groups. “It deals with public safety in its own little broadband world,” one public safety official said of the rulemaking.
The NPRM is expected to ask for comment on the use of the 700 MHz spectrum already dedicated to public safety, sources said. It also is expected to ask questions about who will be responsible for managing roaming between various systems built in the spectrum prior to the creation of a more national network, they said. The NPRM is also expected to ask whether roaming should be managed locally or nationally and by whom. It also will likely ask a series of questions about such technical issues as interoperability testing, conformance testing and signal reliability.
The item follows the recent Public Safety Bureau order which established interoperability requirements for the 700 MHz public safety broadband waiver recipients. Many of the same technical interoperability issues will be addressed in the item for the creation of a nationwide public safety network.
"The FCC sees the creation of a public safety mobile broadband network as a priority and we will continue to move forward with initiatives in this area that will help advance interoperable communications for America’s first responders,” said bureau spokesman Robert Kenny.
Past January meetings have sometimes been devoted to bureau presentations and reviews, with no votes. Genachowski asked for votes at last January’s meeting on a cable program access order and an order limiting so-called robocalls. Another possible topic of the meeting is final data roaming rules, several industry sources said.