By Laura DeKoven Waxman
April 11, 2011

Governor Thomas Kean and Congressman Lee Hamilton, the Chair and Vice Chair of the 9/11 Commission, appearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee March 30 to report on national security reform ten years after the September 11, 2011 terrorist attacks, included in their testimony a call for reallocation of the D Block to public safety.

“We support the immediate allocation of the D-block spectrum to public safety,” they told the Committee in their prepared statement. “We must not approach these urgent matters at a leisurely pace. We don't know when the next attack or disaster will strike. Further delay is intolerable. We urge the Congress to act,” they continued.

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks against the United States released its final report in July 2004. In that report the Commission found that the inability of first responders to communicate with each other was a critical failure on 9/11, and that incompatible and inadequate communications led to needless loss of life. In response the Commission recommended legislation to provide for “the expedited and increased assignment of radio spectrum for public safety purposes.”

“To date, this recommendation languishes,” Kean and Hamilton told the Committee. “We find this unacceptable, because, quite literally, lives are at stake.” They explained, “The political fight has been over whether to allocate spectrum directly to public safety or auction it off to wireless bidders who would then be required to pay for a nationwide public safety communications network.”

Kean and Hamilton reported that “the overwhelming majority of our nation's police chiefs and first responders, however, support the allocation of an additional 10 MHz of radio spectrum—the “D block”—to the existing dedicated public safety spectrum.” They argued, “Public safety agencies would be able to use the D block spectrum to build a nationwide interoperable broadband spectrum, allowing diverse agencies to communicate with each other, and supporting mission critical voice, video, text, and other data transmissions.”

Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, Chair of the Committee, announced at the start of the hearing, that he and Arizona Senator John McCain shortly would reintroduce legislation they offered last year to reallocate the D Block to public safety and support the development and maintenance of a public safety communications broadband network.