Budget Shortfall Means Little Progress on Public Safety Network, NYC Says
New York City has made no progress putting together funding for a 700 MHz public safety network since its last quarterly report, the city said in a filing posted Friday by the FCC. The project did not receive an award from the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, “which was considered the primary funding source,” the city said. Other government bodies that didn’t get BTOP grants offered similar complaints in quarterly filings required by the commission.
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"New York City representatives continue to evaluate alternative funding sources,” the city said. “A New Needs Request for this project was prepared and forwarded” the city’s Office of Management and Budget said, but because of “the City’s fiscal crisis, approval of this request is doubtful in the near term.”
Seattle, also denied BTOP funding, said it’s trying to put together financing. The city said in a filing it has hired a consultant, Televate, to develop an LTE network design. Televate delivered a preliminary design report Dec. 30, Seattle said. The report “identifies preferred radio sites and corresponding coverage and throughput,” the city said. “The report also includes user and operation requirements questionnaire to assist the City of Seattle in gathering information.”
Mesa, Ariz., said it’s considering “a scaled down version of the original LTE system plan” after failing to get BTOP funding. Iowa’s Statewide Interoperable Communications System Board said lack of BTOP money for it “substantially set-back” buildout of a 700 MHz network there. The board said its “timetable will be accordingly moved back.”
In another filing in the 700 MHz public safety docket, Seattle, Mesa, the District of Columbia, Charlotte, N.C., the Iowa board, New Jersey, New Mexico and Oregon asked the FCC to change its rules to allow fixed as well as mobile operations in the spectrum.
A restriction in the rules “reverses the Commission’s tentative conclusion rendered in this docket that fixed operations should be allowed on par with mobile operations on this spectrum, and it does so without notice and comment, without an appropriate record, and contrary to the intent of Congress that this spectrum be allocated for both mobile and fixed services on a primary basis,” the parties said in a petition for reconsideration. “The better policy is to allow both fixed and mobile operations on a primary basis, empowering operators to make reasonable judgments as to the applications that will run on the networks so that they may adapt to meet evolving requirements.”