I. INTRODUCTION

Good Morning Mr. Chairmen, Ranking Members, and Members of the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations and the Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census. My name is Marilyn Praisner and I am a member of the County Council of Montgomery County, Maryland. I am testifying today as the Chair of TeleCommUnity and the Chair of the National Association of Counties’ Telecommunications & Technology Committee. TeleCommUnity is an alliance of individual local governments and their associations, which seeks to refocus attention in Washington on the principles of federalism and comity for local governments’ interests in telecommunications. NACo is the national association of the nation's 3066 counties and seeks to ensure county officials’ voices are heard and understood in the White House and the halls of Congress.

In addition to my leadership positions in TeleCommUnity and NACo, I have real life experience with the challenges facing local governments in the fields of interoperability and interference. I have gained these insights as a:

• Chair of the Montgomery County Council Committee which oversaw the County’s new 800 MHz system including addressing the issues of towers and dead zones;
  
• Vice Chair of the FCC’s Local State Government Advisory Counci;(LSGAC) [1]
  
• Executive Board member of the of Public Safety Wireless Network; (PSWN) [2]
  
• Executive Committee of SAFECOM; [3]
  
• Vice Chair of the National Task Force on Interoperability (NTFI); and[4]
  
• Board member of the Board of the Capital Wireless Integration Network (CapWIN). [5]
  

II. WHERE WE FIND OURSELVES TODAY

My assessment of the status of interoperability and interference can be summed up by the conclusion with which the National Task Force on Interoperability (NFTI) opened its book Why Can’t We Talk.[6] NFTI stated:

In an era where technology can bring news, current events, and entertainment from the farthest reaches of the world, many law enforcement officers, firefighters, and emergency medical service personnel working in the same jurisdiction cannot communicate with one another.

Because I believe this Committee is looking for solutions, and not to assign fault for our current status, let me begin my testimony by summarizing what I believe are the significant matters on which NTFI, CapWIN and PSWN agree:

1. Public safety is a core function of all levels of government.
   
2. Wireless communication is an essential element in executing our joint public safety responsibilities.
   
3. Interoperability and interference are major obstacles, along with lack of cooperation across jurisdictional lines, to government maximizing its return on investments in public safety wireless communications assets.[7]
   
4. The solutions to the challenges of interoperability and interference will not be cheap, but the cost of not acting is so much greater than the cost of fixing these problems.
   
5. While there is no such thing as a “one size fits all solution”, solutions can only be achieved if there is leadership at the federal level and a commitment to cooperation at the state and local level.
   
6. Congress and the Federal Communications Commission must recognize their responsibilities in solving the problems of interoperability and interference by taking steps to ensure that local public safety agencies have adequate funding to achieve interoperability and have access to additional spectrum to alleviate serious interference problems.
   
7. Local government elected officials must be at the table if solutions are to be reached. For while we need the federal government’s leadership, federal leaders need local government ownership of the issue, if we are to jointly make interference-free interoperable communications a reality.

III. INTEROPERABILITY -- “BY RADIO, ON DEMAND IN REAL TIME”

We can not achieve homeland security unless we have public safety wireless communications networks that are capable of supporting coordinated responses to threats at the neighborhood, county, regional or national level. It is no longer acceptable for individual public safety agencies to build communications systems that do not communicate with each other. To be effective before, during and after any given emergency, public safety officials, at all levels of government, must be able to communicate with each other. As multiple agencies in multiple jurisdictions respond to crises, interoperability is essential.

That is why I believe that the PSWN definition of interoperability should be the standard by which we measure achievement.[8] PSWN states that for a system to be interoperable it must permit
“public safety personnel in different agencies or jurisdictions to communicate with each other by radio on demand, in real time.”

We are not there yet.

The challenge of interoperability is not new. While September 11th brought the lack of interoperability into sharper focus, local officials have spoken for years about the basic problems of the lack of interoperable equipment and the lack of adequate interoperable spectrum.[9] If there is a positive outcome from the events of September 11th, 2001, it may be that the public has come to recognize that communication is a primary tool for those who protect life and property even in less publicized events. It is also a vital tool in no less life-threatening incidents – such as fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, major traffic accidents, and the pursuit of armed criminals.

IV. INTERFERENCE

In the 800 MHz band, there is a very real problem with “dead zones.”[10] Dead zones are areas where pubic safety radio communication is impossible because of interference caused by commercial mobile radio service (“CMRS”); or system operational limitations such as antenna placement or the reception/transmission capabilities of existing equipment. [11]

Many of the issues with interference arise from the FCC’s decision to place commercial and public safety wireless communications in close frequency proximity. The FCC has complicated matters by leaving the wireless industry and local government to “work out” emissions interference, or worse, denying local government the ability to protect their first responders.

Local elected officials recognize that radio/telecommunications spectrum is a finite resource, but public safety radio dead zones must be eliminated. America cannot tolerate police officers and firefighter not being able to communicate while involved in life-threatening situations.

A. The Anne Arundel Experience
Let me share with you the experience of Anne Arundel County, Maryland and the less than satisfactory assistance they have received from the Federal Communications Commission.

In 1998, Anne Arundel County, Maryland began to experience "dead zones" or "blackouts." In these dead zones, police, fire or emergency service personnel were unable to use portable receivers on their 800 MHz public safety radio system in the vicinity of commercial radio antenna sites where transmitters also operated in the 800 MHz band. Now while such dead zones would be a problem in any locale, in Anne Arundel County, such dead zones have national implications. For in addition to being home to Annapolis, the state’s capital, Anne Arundel is also home to such national assets such as the National Security Agency, the United States Naval Academy, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, the Baltimore -Washington International Airport and 533 miles of the Chesapeake shoreline. Anne Arundel County has a public safety communications commitment to all of us.

The County informed the FCC of these dead zones and an investigation commenced, only to reach the disputed conclusion that the problem was largely attributable to out-dated receivers used by the County.[12] Adding insult to injury, a year later, in early 2000, the County's police chief wrote to the FCC Chairman to outline the continued and growing problem of dead zones, and has yet to receive a response.

By March of 2002, even the FCC came to realize that the interference being experienced by Anne Arundel’s police and firemen when in proximity to the cell towers housing cellular carriers operating at 800 MHz could not be resolved by receiver improvements alone. Because Anne Arundel was not the only jurisdiction experiencing such interference problems, the FCC opened a rulemaking to consider a proposals by Nextel and others that would "realign" the spectrum at 800 MHz so that public safety uses would be farther removed from commercial uses. The County also hired its own technical consultant to examine the extent of commercial interference to its radio system and recommend solutions. The consultant found 61 dead zones across the County resulting from the operations of Nextel and Cingular Wireless and, to a lesser extent, Verizon Wireless.

Armed with the consultant’s report, the County sought the cooperation of the carriers in mitigating or eliminating the interference. Nextel and Verizon agreed immediately. After several months of resistance, Cingular also joined the effort.

While seeking to address the problem of their dead zones, the County sought to avoid the creation of any new dead zones. They, therefore, adopted a land use approach to the problem (wireless zoning ordinance) that required advance coordination by the carriers to prevent interference to public safety radio. Cingular challenged the ordinance as an unlawful attempt by a local government to regulate in a field for which Congress had granted the FCC exclusive jurisdiction. In an FCC staff decision released in July of 2003, the Commission agreed with Cingular and preempted portions of the County ordinance.

The FCC did order the carriers to “cooperate” with the County to mitigate interference.
The County has appealed the staff’s decision to the full FCC, and that appeal remains pending. The carriers have continued to cooperate as ordered. Unfortunately, the 20 remaining dead zones are unlikely to disappear altogether. The County estimates that eight will remain until its planned system expansion and upgrade is completed in several years. Even when the upgrade is finished, four "intractable" sites are likely to remain unresolved.

While it is possible that the FCC's decision in the 800 MHz rulemaking will finish the job of interference reduction, no decision is expected until 2004, if then. That would mean that the County will have waited six years for a solution to their interference issue, and the only solution may be for the public safety community to move to a different area of the spectrum. What is worse is that the FCC hampered the County’s efforts at self-protection and gave priority to the commercial users of the spectrum.

continued >

---

Notes

1. While recently disbanded by the FCC, the LSGAC was formed in 1997 to advise the FCC on issues of concern to state, local and tribal governments. The LSGAC was comprised of local, state and tribal government officials from throughout the country.
   
2. Jointly sponsored by the Department of Justice and the Department of the Treasury, PSWN was formed to promote effective public safety communications and to foster interoperability among local, state, federal, and tribal communications systems. The program brought together the Federal Law Enforcement Wireless Users Group and an executive committee of local and state public safety officials, to address mutual challenges to improving public safety communications interoperability.
   
3. SAFECOM was established by the Office of Management and Budget and approved by the President’s Management Council to serve as the umbrella program within the Federal government to help local, tribal, State and Federal Public safety agencies improve public safety response.
   
4. NTFI was a collaborative effort of eighteen national associations representing the firstresponders community, and state and local elected and appointed officials
   
5. CapWIN is a state-of-art wireless integrated mobile data communications network being implemented to support federal, state, and local law enforcement, fire and emergency medical services, transportation, and other public safety agencies primarily in the Washington, DC Metropolitan area.
   
6. The book may be downloaded at http://www.agileprogram.org/ntfi/ntfi_guide.pdf
   
7. I believe it is vitally important for the Committee to understand the challenges are not just technical. Turf battles, lack of knowledge and unwillingness to work together are equally to blame for the challenges of interference and lack of interoperability.
   
8. TeleCommUnity, NACo and the National Task Force on Interoperability employ almost the identical standard for interoperability.
   
9. As Why Can’t We Talk noted, it is sadly ironic that on September 11, 1996, five years before the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Public Safety Wireless Advisory Committee (PSWAC) released its final report. PSWAC concluded “unless immediate measures are taken to alleviate spectrum shortfall and promote interoperability, public safety will not be able to adequately discharge their obligation to protect life and property in a safe, efficient, and cost-effective manner.”
   
10. The National Task Force on Interoperability defined dead zones or dead spots as: “The area, zone, or volume of space that is within the expected range of a radio signal, but in which the signal is not detectable and therefore cannot be received. Common causes of dead spots include depressions in the terrain and physical structures.
    
11. In this testimony I will limit my comments to commercial interference as the cause of interference. One should not read my testimony as stating commercial interference is the only cause of dead zones. For a description of dead zones due to lack of coverage or in building signal failure see: Church, Radio dead zones in buildings Eyed, The News Journal; September 15, 1999 (Delaware)
    
12. The conclusion was disputed by the receiver manufacturer, Motorola, and by the County, which pointed out that no equipment or filtering capability existed that could deliver the remedy suggested by the FCC.