IWCE: OEC, FCC Give Progress Reports

The recently created Office of Emergency Communications (OEC) gave IWCE attendees an update on its progress in the last four years, via Director Chris Essid. An estimated 3,500 Public Safety officials have been trained and certified as communications leaders (COMLs), charged with the job of overseeing communications in the aftermath of large scale emergencies requiring multijurisdictional cooperation. The purpose of this certification is to have a uniform process across the country in the event of natural or manmade disasters.

Essid noted that this is accomplishment marks significant progress for the agency. The task of rebanding and restructuring Public Safety communications to be interoperable is a large one, seemingly with no end in sight. The purpose of Essid's address, however, was to explain that though the process is long and ongoing, milestones can be seen and measured. The idea is to just keep up the work and continue running towards an "imaginary finish line." The continued work will bring doubled and tripled numbers of COMLs in the near future.

Another point touched on the rapid development of technology, and in turn, the necessity to update the OEC's National Communications Plan. Next-generation technologies are surfacing monthly, and Public Safety personnel must be prepared to utilize new innovations. Throughout this ongoing evolution, technology must be coordinated. A streamlined plan must be in place in order for various communications disciplines to be efficiently operable. "We can't have one plan for satellite communications and another for LMR," Essid explained.

An update on the status of 800 MHz rebanding was given by Roberto Mussenden, a Federal Communications Commission attorney. Stage 1 is complete, 90% of Stage 2 licensees have frequency reconfiguration agreements completed with Sprint Nextel, and roughly 60% have completed rebanding. Six NPSPAC regions are completely finished with the transition. Stage 1 primarily consistented of non-Public Safety entities, which made the process relatively smoothe. Stage 2 is more of a challenge because of the Public Safety licensing issues it involves. Also, the critical infrastructure Public Safety systems cannot be taken off the air to complete reconfiguration. Statewide systems and other larger systems have taken more time than expected due to their size and infrastructure needs. One potentially unexpected factor in rebanding is the current interconnectivity of Public Safety communications systems (interoperability is a need, but not entirely lacking prior to P25 and rebanding). According to Mussenden, the FCC will not relax any regulations or process requirements to speed up the process. Establishing a rebanding plan with Mexico remains a challenge due to complicated negotiations.

Currently the rebanding deadline is three years passed.  Despite the foggy finishline of the rebanding process(the first ever of its kind), these milestones should ease some frustrations. Read more in the Urgent Communications article.