Proponents optimistic that interoperable public safety network bill will pass.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Homeland Security News

At a recent Senate Homeland I Security and Governmental Affairs committee hearing on the state of interoperable communications for first responders, lawmakers and Department of Homeland Security officials gave themselves high marks.

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It is becoming much easier for fire fighters, police and other public safety agencies to talk to each other in emergencies, they said. Interoperable communications have been a long-standing goal of the homeland security community. The 9/11 attacks--and Hurricane Katrina four years later--pointed to the difficulties different agencies spread across different jurisdictions had speaking with each other.

"Significant progress has been made in bringing these organizations together," said Committee Chairman Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn. A combination of federal stimulus money, DHS grants, and state and local funds have helped tie communication systems together.

Recent operational tests conducted by DHS in 60 urban areas found that all of the agencies and jurisdictions were able to communicate with each other.

The committee was speaking of traditional, push-to-talk radios, though.

The world, however, has moved on.

"Right now, my son and daughter have more [broadband] capability than the firefighters do responding to emergencies every day," Michael D. Varney, statewide interoperability coordinator for the Connecticut Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, said at the hearing.

Smartphones, tablets and other devices have become ubiquitous just about everywhere but police stations and fire departments.

Lieberman said a fire truck rushing to a burning building should be able to receive electronic blueprints of the structure so commanders can begin to plan an operation. Police should be able to take biometric information such as fingerprints and transmit them instantaneously to a server where they can be checked against criminal databases.

The valuable and increasingly crowded spectrum that would be required to bring these capabilities to first responders can be found in the D block, a band that became free when television stations switched from analog to digital broadcasts. The Federal Communications Commission attempted to auction off these airwaves to any entity that wished to build a nationwide first responder network in 2008, but it did not receive enough bids.

The D block has remained in limbo ever since.

The FCC in its national broadband plan released in 2010 proposed that the D...