Tag Archives: first responders

Broadband for Rural Public Safety

Today’s blog talks about the problems encountered by first responders in rural areas related to poor broadband and cellular coverage. The blog was prompted by an excellent report, Beyond Connectivity Among Rural First Responders in Pennsylvania, authored by Christopher Ali, Abigail Simmerman, and DongWood Jeong of The Pennsylvania State University. The report was sponsored by the Center for Rural Pennsylvania, a legislative agency of the Pennsylvania General Assembly. The findings are not going to surprise anybody who works with public safety in rural areas.

The report is based on the findings from focus groups and interviews with law enforcement officers, firefighters, EMTs, 911 center representatives, local officials, and other key stakeholders. The in-depth discussions identified multiple problems that hinder public safety work in rural areas:

  • The lack of rural cellular coverage means there are rural dead zones where first responders and the public can’t reliably communicate with each other. This means the public often has trouble connecting to 911. It means that first responders struggle with dropped calls and often can’t find the person who needs help. The report cites examples where first responders sometimes have to go door-to-door looking for somebody with a landline in order to communicate locally – which will be an increasing problem as copper networks are being torn down.
  • Many jurisdictions have public safety radio networks for first responders to communicate with their home hub. First responders in Pennsylvania complained that there is a major inconsistency between the types of networks being deployed, and that they often find themselves working in an area that uses different radios and frequencies than the radios they are equipped with. They also say that in the mountains that cover Pennsylvania, there are many places where those radio networks don’t reach.
  • There were complaints about the astronomical cost of devices. Both cellphones and public safety radios have gotten increasingly expensive. In rural areas, first responders might have to carry multiple cellphones to connect to different carriers.
  • There is an overall perception among first responders that they are underfunded and don’t have the resources needed to do a good job in rural areas.

The report goes on to address policy issues that might be addressed by the General Assembly if they want to improve public safety performance in rural areas.

  • The rural coverage issues can only be fully addressed with more towers. The report suggests this would be a good use for BEAD non-deployment funds, although it’s looking increasingly unlikely that funding will never be allocated to states.
  • The report suggests the legislature could create rules to address the multiple radio frequencies and technologies being used. They note that Pennsylvania has adopted the P25 radio standard to promote interoperability, but that many local jurisdictions have not adopted the standard.
  • The report also recommends a program to update and replace outdated radio technologies. Many local jurisdictions are sticking with older radio systems due to budget constraints on buying new ones.
  • The report suggests an overall budget increase to provide the money needed to keep up with the ever-increasing cost of radios.
  • The report suggests more funding to fully implement NextGen 911. It notes that the state only adopted this standard in 2025 and there has already been intermittent outages.
  • Finally, the report recommends creating more awareness among state leadership on the conditions encountered in rural public safety.

This is a long 75-page report that goes into a lot of detail, and that is a good read for anybody living in or concerned about rural America. The problems highlighted in Pennsylvania are not unique and are found in varying degrees in rural areas across the country.

The FCC Opens the 900 MHz Band

The FCC voted in its recent open meeting to expand the use of 900 MHz spectrum. The order opens up the full 10 MHz available in the 900 MHz spectrum bands 896–901 and 935–940 MHz, for licensed broadband services. 900 MHz is an attractive band for users since the signals carry a long way and are good at penetrating buildings.

The licensed portion of the spectrum is not of interest to WISPs due to the small size of the channels, which won’t deliver the kinds of speeds expected by home broadband users. But the spectrum can easily support smartphone applications and is of interest to those wishing to deploy private 5G network.

This FCC change does impact the other bands of 900 MHz spectrum. For example, there are numerous uses allowed for the spectrum between 902 and 928 MHz, including ham radio, FM radio repeaters, alarm and security camera systems, video surveillance for law enforcement missions, and transmission of infrared scanner imagery during overflights of disaster areas. Some of these uses are restricted in Texas and New Mexico since this spectrum is also used to monitor the border.

The primary users of the expanded-use bands will be electric, gas, and water utilities that have been using the spectrum for automated meter reading and other network monitoring devices. The purpose of the FCC’s change is to provide more bandwidth and expanded capacity to utilities. The FCC order predicts that the changes to the spectrum usage will promote better smart metering, grid modernization, and network security and resilience. Under the former rules, transmissions in the band were restricted to 5 MHz licenses, which limited the ability for utilities to launch private 5G and LTE networks.

The new order provides different options for a current license holder to:

  • Continue to use the legacy configuration of 20 wideband channels and 200 narrowband channels.
  • Operate two paired 3 MHz channels and two segments of the remaining 4 MHz of spectrum to operate 159 narrowband channels.
  • Operate two paired 5 MHz channels to deploy more broadband use cases.

This change largely benefits Anterix. The company purchased a nationwide license for 6 MHz of the spectrum from Sprint in 2014. Anterix has been selling and leasing that spectrum to utilities to create private wireless networks. This new order gives the company the use of all 10 MHz of the spectrum.

One of the most interesting aspects of the new order is that it anticipates that the spectrum will be made available to others through voluntary negotiations and market-based transactions. The Anterix spectrum today is largely deployed on a county-by-county basis, and this order opens the door for entities other than utilities to license the spectrum to create local private 5G networks. This could be used by corporations or local governments looking for a private and secure wireless network outside of the public cellular networks.

I recently noted how the public cellular networks crashed in Western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene. While a number of cell sites sustained physical damage, many were still operational, but still failed since the backhaul fiber lines feeding the region were damaged or destroyed. While the lack of cell signal was a major inconvenience for the public, it was a crushing blow to first responders who found themselves unable to communicate. A private in-county 5G network for first responders using 900 MHz could have continued to work locally on the functional cell towers. This would have greatly benefited the search and rescue effort and the overall coordination of first responder resources.

It will take a while to see if this is a giveaway to Anterix or if this will really open up new opportunities for first responders and other local private wireless network providers.

T-Mobile Offering Broadband Solutions

As part of the push to get approval for the proposed merger with Sprint, T-Mobile pledged that it will offer low-cost data plans, give free 5G to first responders and provide free broadband access to underserved households with school students. These offers are all dependent upon regulators and the states approving the merger.

The low-price broadband plans might be attractive to those who don’t use a lot of cellular data. The lowest-price plan offers 2 GB of data for $15 monthly. The price is guaranteed for 5 years and the data cap grows by 500 MB per year to reach 4 GB in the fifth year. The second plan offers 5 GB for $25 and also grows by 500 Mb per year to reach 7 GB by the fifth year. I assume adding voice and texting is extra.

The offer for free phones for first responders is just that. T-Mobile will offer free voice, texting, and data to first responders for 10 years. There will be no throttling of data and data will always get priority. The company estimates that this would save $7.7 billion nationwide for first responders over the ten years if they all switch to T-Mobile. Not surprisingly the other carriers are already unhappy with this offer, particularly AT&T which is busy building the nationwide FirstNet first responder network. This may be a somewhat hollow offer. The FirstNet network has some major advantages such as automatically interconnecting responders from different jurisdictions. But at least some local governments are going to be attracted to free cellular service.

The offer for school students is intriguing. For the next five years, the company is offering 100 GB per month of downloaded data to eligible student households. The company will also provide a free WiFi hotspot that converts the cellular data into WiFi for home use. T-Mobile estimates that roughly 10 million households would be eligible. Studies have shown that cost is the reason that many homes with students don’t have home broadband. In urban areas, the T-Mobile effort could largely eliminate the homework gap, at least for five years. That would give the country five years to find a more permanent solution. While T-Mobile would also help in rural America, many rural homes are not in range of a T-Mobile tower capable of delivering enough broadband to be meaningful. However, in many cases, this offer would be bringing broadband for homework to homes with no other broadband alternatives.

If the merger goes through, T-Mobile plans to mobilize the big inventory of 2.5 GHz spectrum owned by Sprint as well as activating 600 MHz spectrum. These are interesting spectrum, particularly the 600 MHz. This spectrum is great at penetrating buildings and can reach deep into most buildings. The spectrum also carries far, up to 10 miles from a transmitter. However, compared to higher frequencies, the 600 MHz spectrum won’t carry as much data. Further, data speeds decrease with distance from a cell sites and the data speeds past a few miles are likely to be pretty slow.

This plan makes me wonder how allowing millions of students onto the cellular network for homework will affect cell sites. Will some cell sites bog down when kids are all connected to the school networks to do homework?

I further wonder if the promise to offer free broadband to students also comes with a promise to supply enough backhaul bandwidth to poor neighborhoods to support the busy networks. Without good backhaul, the free bandwidth might be unusable at peak hours. I don’t mean to denigrate an offer that might mean a broadband solution for millions of kids – but I’ve also learned over the years that free doesn’t always mean good.

I’ve seen where a few states like New York are still against the merger, so there is no guarantee it’s going to happen. It sounds like the courts will have to decide. I suspect these offers will be withdrawn if the decision is made by courts rather than by the states.