A U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee has approved legislation that would provide funding for a nationwide mobile broadband network for public safety agencies and would allow the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to sell auction spectrum voluntarily given up by U.S. television stations.
Ten years ago, on Sept. 11, terrorists crashed airplanes into the Twin Towers in New York, the Pentagon in northern Virginia and a field in rural Pennsylvania. In the scramble to respond to the terrorist attacks, multiple fire departments and other emergency agencies converged on the scenes, only to find that they couldn't talk to each other.
A Republican proposal to auction more wireless spectrum to mobile carriers would leave U.S. police and fire departments "worse off" than they are today, instead of creating the new nationwide public safety mobile-broadband network anticipated for a decade, one police chief said Friday.