It‘s too early to be certain, but FCC Chairman Kevin Martin‘s statements last week regarding an expected vote later this month on auction rules for the D Block sure smelled like a classic good-news/bad-news scenario for public safety entities counting on the auction to deliver wireless broadband to first responders.

The good news: Martin outlined an auction strategy greatly enhances the likelihood that commercial wireless operators will bid on the 10 MHz of spectrum in a manner that the FCC will deem a success — a much-needed victory after no qualifying bids were placed on the D Block earlier this year.

The bad news: Under the new FCC proposal, a successful D Block could result in a wireless broadband network for public safety that fails to provide coverage in about 97% of the geographic area of the United States.

That‘s because the new proposal requires only that 50% of the U.S. population be served by composite of regional operator for the FCC to declare the auction a success and award licenses to the high bidders in those regions that solicit offers. And, based on the latest census information, slightly more than 50% of the U.S. population live in the nation‘s 40 most-populous metropolitan areas, which combine to cover about 3% of the United States‘ land mass.

For public safety officials hoping that a successful D Block auction would lead to a nationwide wireless network for first responders, such news probably is disappointing. But the fact that the FCC is expected to approve the plan at its Sept. 25 meeting is a reflection of the commission‘s need to get this spectrum auctioned and have at least the beginning of a broadband network for public safety built.

Mind you, even under the previous rules — requiring 99.3% population coverage — critics noted that this would not have been a truly nationwide network, as vast areas west of the Mississippi River would not have been part of the coverage map. However, the new proposal could result in a coverage map that no longer blankets the continental United States east of the Mississippi.

In a press conference a week ago, Martin said the FCC would be conducting “almost three auctions” for the D Block simultaneously. One auction would present the spectrum as it was earlier this year, as a nationwide swath available for a minimum bid of $750 million, or almost half the reserve price for the D Block in the previous auction.

Of course, economics dictate that saving a few hundred million in upfront spectrum costs likely won‘t be enough to offset the projected $20 billion needed to deploy a nationwide broadband wireless network. As a result, most industry observers doubt that there will be any nationwide bids, although the FCC and the Public Safety Spectrum Trust both have expressed their preference for such a bidder.

Thankfully, the FCC has conceived of an alternate method to find a private partner. Concurrent with the nationwide D Block auction, there will be two auctions in which the spectrum will be divided into 58 regional licenses. To ensure technological uniformity across the network, bidders can submit their offers in either the WiMAX auction or the LTE auction.

If there is not a nationwide bidder, the FCC will award licenses and deem the auction a success if either of the technology-based regional auctions covers at least 50% of the U.S. population. If both the WiMAX auction and the LTE auction reach the 50% coverage threshold, the technology that provides more coverage will be declared the technology standard for the shared network — even if the consolidated bid amount for the other technology is greater.

As mentioned before, covering 50% of the population may not mean that a great deal of geographic area would have wireless broadband for public safety. However, this setup should be much more attractive to commercial carriers trying to sell the notion of participating in this unprecedented joint venture to potential investors at a time when the capital markets are tight, so there‘s a legitimate chance that carriers might be enticed to cover more than 50%.

Meanwhile, after the initial auction is complete and either WiMAX or LTE is chosen as the network technology, the FCC is going to do something unique. If some regions are unclaimed, it will lower the reserve price on those regions by half and offer them again to bidders willing to provide coverage in the chosen technology.

Another item that should appeal to commercial carriers is that the buildout period would be extended from 10 years to 15 years. Other buildout details — such as hardening requirement for site — that will greatly impact the economic viability of the network are still to be decided.

Only time will tell whether this approach will allow the public-private partnership to strike that delicate balance of being economically viable for the commercial partner and fulfilling public safety‘s needs. But Martin and the FCC deserve to be applauded for devising a multitiered approach to the auction that provides about as much flexibility as possible in an effort to attract commercial bidders.

One of the longtime problems in public safety communications has been the fact that the frequencies used by first-responder agencies are dispersed throughout the spectrum chart. In the name of interoperability, multiple vendors have designed myriad network-based solutions that allow patching between systems operating in different bands, but there‘s always a fundamental caveat: patching doesn‘t work if there‘s no coverage in the band in which your radio is designed to work.

As a result, public safety has become accustomed to stories of 800 MHz radios being useless when big-city personnel are dispatched to an incident in a rural area, where radio coverage likely is provided in the VHF or UHF bands, forcing the need for radio swaps or more creative solutions.

But such scenarios might not exist much longer, as multiband radios will be available from several manufacturers in 2009, providing public safety agencies with options that have been discussed at trade shows such as this week‘s Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials in Kansas City. The difference between this APCO show and previous industry trade shows is that agencies can now contrast and compare multiband portable radios from multiple vendors.

The trend started earlier this year at the IWCE conference in March, when Thales Communications announced its Liberty radio. The Liberty, a key component in a DHS pilot, can operate in the UHF, VHF and 700/800 bands, and was public-safety-ready in March. Since then, Thales has tweaked the prototype shown at IWCE — adding, among other things, a color display — and plans to make the Liberty radio generally available early in 2009, said Steve Nichols, Thales‘ director of business development for DHS/public safety.

Another multiband radio showcased at IWCE came from Harris, which displayed a multiband offering targeted to federal agencies. While impressed with the technology, several public-safety officials at the show expressed concern that Harris would not be able to make the radio for public safety, which needs gear with greater interference-mitigation characteristics. Apparently, such concerns were unfounded, as Harris this week has unveiled a public-safety version of its multiband radio.

One significant drawback associated with these radios is that they do not operate on proprietary systems used by most of public safety, only on P25 systems that represent a relatively small — but growing — portion of the market.

That‘s what makes the introduction of Motorola‘s APX 7000 multiband radio so significant. This new portable operates in the VHF and 700/800 MHz bands — and Motorola promises that a UHF and 700/800 MHz configuration is coming soon — not only on P25 systems. It also works on Motorola SmartNet and SmartZone systems that are used by a large percentage of U.S. public safety agencies.

The inclusion of proprietary protocols in a multiband handset makes such devices not only valuable interoperability tools but promises to make the migration to new P25 systems much smoother than has been the case in the past. Public-safety officials have made no secret that they hope that network vendors such as Motorola and M/A-COM will license their protocols to third-party multiband radio manufacturers, but there are serious questions whether the strategy would be in the legacy companies‘ financial best interest.

Regardless, the fact is that multiband capability no longer is a subject relegated to theoretical debates during conference sessions. These three vendors have products that can be seen and will be available next year, and more multiband handsets from other manufacturers should hit the market in the near future.

This reality opens up a new set of possibilities for public-safety communications. Once again, a big technological hurdle appears to have been cleared, leaving public-safety agencies to wrestle with two age-old issues — finding a way to pay for new equipment and developing the agreements and procedures to ensure that technological progress result in effective interoperable communications, not flexible chaos.

For better or worse, the fate of the 10-MHz D Block and the proposed public-private partnership that would build a nationwide broadband wireless network for first responders has become a hot topic in our nation‘s capital. The start of the comment period on the FCC‘s latest notice of proposed rulemaking promises to be just the beginning of spirited debate and lobbying on the issue over the next several months.

While most of the wireless industry understandably will be focused on the broadband aspects of this matter, the decisions made also promise to have a significant impact on public-safety narrowband operations in the 700-MHz band — a matter that has received virtually no attention from the mainstream media.

The fact is, the spectral home for the proposed 700-MHz broadband wireless network for public safety is occupied in some parts of the country by narrowband public-safety communications systems. Obviously, before there can be a nationwide broadband network on these airwaves, these incumbent narrowband networks have to be relocated.

If this sounds conceptually similar to 800-MHz rebanding, it is. Thankfully, it should not be as complicated, as there are relatively few agencies that have deployed 700-MHz narrowband systems and they‘ve all been installed recently with fairly new equipment that can be relocated more easily, so the technical issues are not nearly as great.

Still, it has to get done. In its 700-MHz order last summer, the FCC charged the public safety broadband licensee — a designation later given to the Public Safety Spectrum Trust — to devise a relocation plan in conjunction with the commercial D Block winner. Within 30 days after licenses were awarded from the 700-MHz auction, the two entities were supposed to present a relocation plan to the FCC, with the D Block winner agreeing to pay no more than $10 million for narrowband relocation.

Of course, there was no D Block winner in the auction, which means there is no funding source to pay for the relocation of narrowband 700-MHz networks. Meanwhile, the FCC has taken no action to relax the rule requiring narrowband 700 MHz systems to relocate by Feb. 17, 2009, when television broadcasters nationwide also have to vacate the spectrum.

In other words, public-safety agencies with 700-MHz narrowband systems have less than nine months to relocate these networks, but “there is absolutely no assurance that they‘re going to get reimbursed until this is all done,” PSST Chairman Harlin McEwen said during an interview with MRT. Indeed, lawyers for some public safety entities have told their elected officials to be prepared to pay the relocation costs based on the current uncertainty.

McEwen noted that the PSST is responsible for developing a 700-MHz relocation plan, despite the fact that the PSST currently has no source of revenue. Furthermore, McEwen said the PSST‘s initial research indicates that the $10 million figure cited by the FCC will not be enough to reimburse all public safety agencies operating in the band.

While FCC commissioners have hardly mentioned the narrowband-relocation aspect of the 700-MHz band plan, it has not been forgotten. In its NPRM published this week, the FCC asks commenters to provide input on a number of questions regarding narrowband relocation, including whether the $10 million figure is appropriate, whether the D Block winner should provide relocation funds, whether the relocation should occur by Feb. 17, 2009, and whether the PSST should continue to play a role.

In addition, the NPRM asks whether reimbursement — from whatever source — should be provided for systems deployed after Aug. 30, 2007, the FCC‘s previous cutoff date for reimbursement. Extending the deadline would increase the cost of relocation, but not doing so could put an unwanted damper on narrowband deployment plans in the band.

There are legitimate arguments on each of these items. Hopefully, commenters will not get so caught up in the broadband aspects of this debate that the narrowband issues are ignored. The FCC needs to get this right in both areas; otherwise, we face potential delays in the deployment of both narrowband and broadband communications for first responders in this valuable band.

A couple of weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security‘s Science and Technology Directorate coordinated a demonstration of voice interoperability between six different manufacturers‘ systems using a new Bridging System Interface.

During the demonstration, gear from Motorola, Scitec, Valcom, Cisco Systems, Clarity Communications Systems and Twisted Pair Solutions were connected via the BSI, and communications were conducted in a scenario format involving state, county and local jurisdictions operating on separate bands.

DHS officials were careful to note that the BSI is not a standard, but a specification that leverages commercial voice-over-IP technology. Equipment that allows disparate radio systems to interoperate via an IP platform is nothing new, but that doesn‘t mean that the various bridging systems easily interoperate with each other, said Dereck Orr, program manager for public safety communications standards for the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

“Just because it says it‘s IP doesn‘t mean it‘s interoperable,” Orr said. “We needed to get that word out to public safety and to policymakers, as well.”

However, by using IP commonalities, program participants — DHS, vendors and public safety representatives — were able to establish a BSI specification that typically has not been terribly difficult for manufacturers to incorporate in their solutions, said Luke Klein-Berndt, chief technology officer for DHS S&T.

“We were looking for that common technical space and work there,” he said. “We wanted to come up with the best technical solution but also come up with one that didn‘t mean dramatic changes for anyone.”

On the surface, the idea of getting multiple vendors that compete with one another on a daily basis to work together might seem to be a difficult proposition, but DHS officials insist that wasn‘t the case. The logistics coordinating vendor representatives‘ schedules were a challenge, but once they were at the same table, “things really started to flow,” Klein-Berndt said.

DHS deserves a lot of credit in making this happen. It‘s nice to know that IP-based connectivity systems should be able to work together, but it‘s much more valuable to first responders to know that they do work together and to be able to cite a specification in bid documents.

Such interoperability is important because federal officials estimate that as much as $100 billion has been spent on public-safety LMR systems across the country, so that‘s not an investment that can be overhauled overnight. The LMR systems are going to be around for a long time, so technologies like the BSI are valuable in making that happen.

Of course, the BSI is not the only DHS interoperability initiative. The federal department also is spearheading development efforts for multiband radio, radio over wireless broadband, and even an ingenious system that gives helicopter pilots homeland-security surveillance assignments that can be accomplished during their return trips from missions.

By themselves, none of these solutions are the answer to interoperability — there is no single “silver bullet” that will solve the problem. But with each successful DHS project, public-safety communications officials are given another tool that will let them build a solid foundation for interoperability, both now and in the future.

We’re less than a week away from the beginning of the much-anticipated auction of 700-MHz spectrum, but we still have no indication whether a wireless operator will bid on the 10 MHz of commercial D Block airwaves, which is supposed to be paired with public safety’s 10 MHz to provide the foundation for a nationwide wireless broadband network for emergency responders.

Since the well-chronicled demise of Frontline Wireless earlier this month, speculation has been rampant among industry observers whether an operator will submit a minimum bid of $1.3 billion for the D Block. And all we have is speculation, because the FCC’s anti-collusion rules prohibit the agency or anyone else from disclosing whether any entity even submitted a qualified application for the D Block license, much less whether they actually will bid on the spectrum.

I have yet to find an industry observer who believes there is better than a 50% chance that there will be a bidder for the D Block. The reasons for not bidding are numerous, but a key point is the $15 billion to $20 billion projected cost for a network that needs to provide unprecedented coverage and performance. In addition, the fact that the public-private partnership model is unproven represents the kind of uncertainty that investors are trying to avoid amid a projected credit crunch — a reality that apparently undermined Frontline.

However, FCC and public-safety officials continue to express optimism that there will be at least one bidder. I hope this optimism is warranted, because the proposed public-private partnership is an inspired way to give public safety much-needed broadband tools without having to find the massive amount of upfront capital to build a network.

If no D Block bidders emerge in this auction — and we won’t know that is the case until the auction is completed, probably sometime in March — the FCC would have to reauction the swath of airwaves, presumably with different rules governing the spectrum. This could be as simple as lowering the reserve price, or it could involve altering the buildout or public safety–related requirements.

Promising to complicate matters in such a scenario would be the timing of events. Even if a second auction is fast tracked, there’s a decent chance that the identity of the winning bidder would not be known until June. FCC rules provide the D Block winner and the Public Safety Spectrum Trust — the licensee for public safety’s broadband spectrum — six months to negotiate a complex network-sharing agreement. Such a timeline presents the possibility that the FCC would need to review the terms — or disputed aspects — of the network-sharing in December or January, when history tells us it’s likely that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin will be a lame duck or replaced, regardless of which party wins the White House.

If a typical post-election FCC transition occurs during this time period, it may be difficult for the agency to devote the kind of attention to the network-sharing agreement that it would like in a quick manner, as staff will be processing new appointments, shuffling offices and helping provide last-minute preparations for the transition to digital television that is scheduled for February 2009.

Regardless which scenario occurs, leadership from the PSST is a vital component to making the public-private partnership concept a reality. Educating the emergency-response community about the 700-MHz broadband endeavor is a must during the next several months. In addition, the PSST may have to work even more with public safety to retool expectations regarding network specifications in an effort to make the project more palatable to a commercial operator, without compromising the primary mission.

With the process having so many moving parts, it’s doubtful that the 15-member PSST board will be able to reach an internal consensus on all issues that will face the licensee. However, maintaining a united front publicly is crucial, as signs of dissension could undermine the PSST’s position in negotiating the network-sharing agreement.

Similarly, it is important that the PSST — an entity with no clear way to generate revenue until a network-sharing agreement is reached — demonstrate that it is financially stable enough to withstand even protracted delays, because any indication of weakness in this area could be exploited by the D Block winner in negotiations.

In a federal-government arena, decisions typically are made at a glacial-like pace. That has not been the case with this public-private partnership concept, which amazingly moved from a dismissed notion last March to an FCC order less than five months later. Hopefully, the pieces will fall into place — beginning with a commercial partner and strong PSST leadership — to allow this innovative idea to become a broadband reality for emergency responders.

With the 700-MHz auction less than three weeks away, speculation is rampant regarding which operators will secure valuable spectrum, particularly for the 10-MHz D Block that will be paired with public safety’s 10-MHz in the band to provide the foundation for a nationwide broadband wireless network.

Jan. 4 was the deadline for the 266 potential bidders to make their upfront payments to the FCC and complete their applications to participate in the auction, something that most were expected to do. Assuming they fulfill their application requirements, the vast majority of bidders will be regional players likely pursuing some of the hundreds of licenses available in the A and B blocks — airwaves not encumbered by rules requiring open access (as in the 22-MHz C Block) or a deal with public safety (as in the D Block).

“Of the 266, the majority are after the A and B blocks,” mobile wireless analyst Andrew Seybold said during an interview with MRT. “There are very few on this list, I would guess, that have the stomach to go after the C and D blocks.”

Indeed, bidders will need deep pockets to secure one of the seven C Block licenses — the combined reserve price is $4.6 billion — or the nationwide D Block license, which will require a minimum bid of $1.3 billion. That’s a lot of money to invest before spending a dime on network deployment.

Groups that can be ruled out include Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile and the cable consortium that bid in last year’s AWS auction, because none of them filed an application to participate in the auction (some cable firms are expected to bid individually, probably on a regional basis).

Familiar names that have filed applications and have the money to make a bid on nationwide spectrum include incumbent wireless providers like Verizon Wireless and AT&T Mobility, as well as intriguing entrants like Google, Frontline Wireless, Qualcomm, Chevron and Vulcan Spectrum, which is headed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

Seybold believes Chevron and Vulcan are seeking targeted regional spectrum, while Qualcomm is most interested in the E Block — an unpaired 6-MHz swath that is adjacent to the airwaves the company is using for its MediaFLO mobile-broadcasting initiative. Google is expected to bid on the C Block, which includes the open-access mandate the company championed before the FCC.

While it’s possible that one or more of these four entities might be interested in the D Block, none would be considered a probable D Block bidder. Seybold said Qualcomm’s broadband public-safety experience in the Washington, D.C., area makes it particularly intriguing, but he doubts the vendor will want to risk being seen as a competitor to its service-provider customers.

With this in mind, Seybold said he believes the most likely D Block bidders are Verizon Wireless (bidding as Cellco Partnership), AT&T Mobility and Frontline Wireless (bidding as Licenseco). Frontline publicly has expressed interest in working with public safety on a nationwide basis, while Verizon and AT&T have been discussing possibilities with public-safety officials for more than a year.

“I didn’t see any other names that could step up,” Seybold said.

Key officials representing the FCC and the Public Safety Spectrum Trust, the licensee for public safety’s 700-MHz broadband spectrum, have expressed confidence that an operator will bid for the D Block. But Seybold is not so sure any bidder is comfortable it can build a network on the spectrum that will meet public safety’s requirements and still deliver the return on investment needed to keep stockholders happy.

“That one’s too close to call for me,” Seybold said.

It is the possibility that no one will bid on the D Block that has to be most worrisome to public safety and FCC officials right now. Without a bid, the current idea of a public-private partnership for a public-safety network will have to be scrapped, and the first-responder community will be left with 10 MHz of prime spectrum and no clear way to fund the buildout of a network on it.

Hopefully, when the auction opens on Jan. 24, at least one qualifying bid will be made. Of course, the FCC’s anonymous-bidding rules will preclude us from knowing who has placed the high bid until the auction is finished — probably in March — but just knowing that a qualifying bid exists will let everyone involved proceed along the course established by the FCC last year.

At that point, it will be much easier for PSST officials to sleep. And they need their rest now, as burning the midnight oil could become the rule when the PSST tries to negotiate a network-sharing agreement with the D Block winner during the six-month window after the auction.