When I saw that the FCC was letting 21 municipalities move forward with plans to build out their public safety networks, my first thought was, “Great! But where’s the spectrum?”

The FCC has only allocated 10 MHz of spectrum in the 700 MHz band solely for public safety, with a contiguous 10 MHz that they will share with commercial carriers for emergency backup. I don’t think this is enough and neither do many in the public safety community.

So far, the FCC has moved ahead with plans to create a much-needed Emergency Response Interoperability Center and has begun the approval process for deployment of public safety networks. The networks are to be technically compatible with one another and fully interoperable. This type of momentum is what first responders need to get their long-awaited wireless broadband network up and running.

I just worry that once it deploys, they’ll be faced with the same kind of capacity crunch commercial operators are struggling to deal with right now. 

You see, public safety networks aren’t like commercial networks. Whereas commercial networks are built for average usage patterns, public safety networks are built for peak usage patterns which occur during emergencies.

First responders will need a massive amount of bandwidth to communicate with each other during crises like natural disasters and terrorist attacks. They’ll depend on a mere 10 Hz of spectrum to carry critical, high-capacity applications that will play a crucial part of saving lives. Sure, they’ll be able to roam onto an additional 10 MHz on carrier’s networks, but many in the public safety community have reservations about the ability of commercial-grade networks to handle high levels of emergency traffic.

The spectrum position of first responders lays a weak foundation for all of the FCC’s subsequent work on the public safety network. It could undermine the agency’s notable efforts to get the network up and running as soon as possible.

It would have been difficult politically for the FCC to recommend another auction of the D-Block for public safety after the last such auction failed in 2008, but I think the safety of U.S. citizens should rise above political wrangling.

Instead, the agency chose to go with a politically easy way forward – a way that could end up short changing the safety of U.S. citizens.