{"id":2562,"date":"2011-03-12T15:17:36","date_gmt":"2011-03-12T19:17:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/?p=3928"},"modified":"2023-04-30T14:33:09","modified_gmt":"2023-04-30T18:33:09","slug":"broadband-for-first-responders-act-of-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/2011\/03\/broadband-for-first-responders-act-of-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"Broadband for First Responders Act of 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I found this bit of proposed legislation<\/a> by Peter King (R-NY) interesting:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Not later than 10 years after the date of enactment of this Act, the paired electromagnetic spectrum bands of 420\u2013440 megahertz and 450\u2013470 megahertz recovered as a result of the report and order required under subsection (c) shall be auctioned off by the Federal Communications Commission through a system of competitive bidding meeting the requirements of section 309 of the Communications Act of 1934.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Will this mean broadcasters be losing their Part 74 Broadcast Auxiliary RPU licenses? \u00a0Section 74.402(4)(b)(4) lists those frequencies as 450.03125 through 450.950 and 455.03125 through 455.950 MHz in various channel configurations. \u00a0These frequencies are used mostly for RPU but are also used for TSL systems. This is the NITA frequency allocation chart. \u00a0The RPU frequencies are shared but I doubt an entity that has paid through the nose for exclusive use of a frequency band would be interested in that.\u00a0Further, according to Part 97.301(a), the 70 cm Amateur Radio frequencies are from 420 to 450 MHz. \u00a0That has the Amateur Radio users quite upset, and rightly so. \u00a0I don’t know if this has filtered down to broadcasters yet, but losing RPU and TSL frequencies would likely be an inconvenience, to say the least.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What gives? \u00a0Reading through the bill, it seems there would be a multi-part shuffle over several years to move the “first responders” to a nationwide system on the 758-768 and 788-798 MHz frequencies. \u00a0The then “empty” frequencies would be auctioned off, except some of them aren’t so empty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does this mean that all the existing police, fire, and ambulance radios will be phased out in favor of the 700 MHz units? \u00a0Didn’t they just install a bunch of trunked 800 MHz systems recently? Wasn’t that an expensive boondoggle that still has yet to be sorted out in some locations? \u00a0Ah well, it’s only $2 billion or so taxpayers dollars, which, to fight terrorism, anything goes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I found this bit of proposed legislation by Peter King (R-NY) interesting: Not later than 10 years after the date of enactment of this Act, the paired electromagnetic spectrum bands of 420\u2013440 megahertz and 450\u2013470 megahertz recovered as a result of the report and order required under subsection (c) shall be auctioned off by the … Continue reading Broadband for First Responders Act of 2011<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[196],"class_list":["post-2562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-moral-fraud"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2562"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11851,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2562\/revisions\/11851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.engineeringradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}