The Federal Communications Commission is poised to auction off the T-Band, a sliver of the spectrum set solely for public safety personnel across 11 dense cities to securely communicate during emergencies, in 2021.
Yet legislation to keep it from happening is swiftly advancing across the Senate.
A bill aimed at preserving first responders’ access—The Don’t Break Up the T-Band Act—introduced in October by Sens. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bob Casey, D-Penn., moved through the Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday as a provision of the 5G Spectrum Act.
“When a firefighter in Massachusetts reaches for the radio to call for backup, that first responder relies on the T-Band. When a 911 dispatcher sends police to the scene of a crime, that’s the T-Band in action. And after the Boston Marathon bombing, first responders used T-Band to coordinate with each other during the ensuing manhunt,” Markey said in a statement. “We owe it to the public safety community to provide the infrastructure and tools they need to do their jobs.”
The T-Band was assigned in the early 1970s, due to high populations and the density of communication systems in 11 of America’s most metropolitan cities. Don Root, the chair of the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council’s Spectrum Management Committee, told Nextgov Thursday that the legislation is necessary because that high usage still exists today. He said the majority of the large public safety radio systems in areas like Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York operate in the T-band. The other spectrum in those areas ..
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