Public Safety Network Tough Sell in States Like Montana, Official Says
Montana Chief Information Office Dick Clark warned Thursday that in an era of state and federal government cutbacks, there’s no easy path to a nationwide public safety network in large states like his with small populations. Clark and New Jersey CTO Adel Ebeid elaborated on the challenges each of their states faces during discussion at the National Association of State Chief Information Officers’ midyear meeting.
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"The state of Montana lives on grants,” Clark said. “The question is are those grants going to go away?” Programs built on matching grants “kill us” because states like Montana can’t provide the match, he said: “It doesn’t matter how much money the feds want to throw at us. If we can’t match it, it does us no good.” Donor states that pay in more to the government than they get back “don’t want to give to the donee states because there’s nobody there,” he said. “At the end of the day when you start talking about interoperability … it makes sense to have everybody treated the same."
The FCC and policymakers also must be cognizant of Montana’s huge size relative to states in the East, with a population of just 900,000, Clark said. “We're huge. We take up a whole time zone,” he said. Montana faces huge challenges, such as wild fires, Clark said. “We've been lucky, but really interoperability is going to be the key to dealing with fire suppression,” he said.
Montana and other states in the region also house much of the nation’s nuclear arsenal, also making interoperable communications critical, Clark said. “At the end of the day we have a huge mission to the United States,” he said. “We have a huge mission to ourselves. There’s just so few of us."
But Clark warned that Western states are skeptical of public-private partnerships, like those proposed by the FCC. “Why? Because we end up putting up a lot of cash to the private sector … we don’t get much in the way of benefits,” he said. “When the carriers come in and have a chat with us about what they're going to do in the state of Montana we're highly skeptical. You've got to take a look at the history of the West. It’s boom or bust. People roll in when times are good. They make a boatload of cash and then they leave."
Smaller carriers that dominate the state will play a major part in deciding what gets built in Montana and policymakers also need to take that into account, Clark said. “They're weaved into the local fabric … especially in Eastern Montana,” he said. “They're not dumb. They get state representatives and senators to sit on their boards. … They're going to take care of their own."
NASCIO attendees got a different perspective from Ebeid, whose state is building one of the early networks in the 700 MHz band using Broadband Technology Opportunities Program funding. Ebeid said the network will be expensive to build and operate.
Ebeid noted that in rural America the average cell tower’s signal extends up to eight miles, compared to 0.6 to three miles in urban areas. Tower siting is a huge issue, he said. “It’s difficult to achieve the desired coverage,” he said. “We have to figure engineering solutions that may not require towers … whether it’s antennas on top of buildings or other ways to try to achieve the coverage."
FCC Public Safety Bureau Chief Jennifer Manner offered an update on FCC efforts to develop a national public safety network. “It has to be reliable,” she said. “It has to include the rural areas. That’s something we take very seriously.” The public safety network won’t necessarily be exactly the same in all states, she said. “What we want to ensure is that if someone from Montana is going to New Jersey, or vice versa, that they're able to talk with one another and share data.”