Spectrum Shift Threatens Radio Communication

Maryland, Virginia and the District are all in the first wave of the rebanding project, but each wave is divided into two stages, and most of the public safety systems are in the second stage.

Fairfax has the distinction of being in the first stage and will begin negotiating with Nextel within weeks. The early changeover date means the county is at risk of falling out of step with its neighbors, which worries James Wadsworth, manager of the Fairfax County Radio Services Center.

"This is the most significant thing that's ever hit the radio waves, ever in the history of radio. It's coming at us like a freight train," he said.

After meeting last month with representatives of Nextel, the FCC and the Transition Administrator, Wadsworth was even more worried.

"They said there would be no interruption of service," he recalled. "And I said, 'Okay. Why are you only talking to Fairfax in this phase? Because all the other jurisdictions would be affected when we change.' And they didn't have an answer."

He is not alone in saying planners vastly underestimated the magnitude and complexity of rebanding the nation's public safety radio systems.

Members of the Metropolitan Council of Governments' police communications subcommittee are anxious not only about their ability to communicate across borders, but also about the tight deadline and daunting logistics.

When Montgomery County joined the 800-megahertz system in July 2003, it was a year behind schedule, said subcommittee Chairman Alan Felsen, who works for the Montgomery County police's technology division. If the problem of operating across borders is going to be solved by every county's switching over on the same day or week, as some have suggested, such delays could tear up even the most coordinated project, especially when amplified over a dozen or so jurisdictions, he said.

"Even if you could say this is all going to go perfectly, I don't understand how we can preserve the level of interoperability during the process," Felsen said.

But Robert Gurss, director of legal and government affairs for the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials, said that once planners sit down "with pencil and paper," they will be able to work through the problems of organizing the switch. "This is not something that everyone woke up eleventh-hour and realized there was a problem," he said.

And Capt. Tim Bowman, of the Anne Arundel police department, said his agency had already made plans to reprogram all the radios that need to be fixed in stages according to their priority. "What it becomes is an inconvenience," he said. "We have to pull them in and touch them. It's not hard, it's just that there are so many of them."