Save lives with spectrum

With the imminent vote on the digital dividend report, the European parliament has a unique opportunity to give an important political message and stress the societal value of public safety services and the need to include support for their operational requirements in the context of the switch-off of analogue services. This is also very timely, as the spectrum planning of this most important band goes ahead at a rapid pace and member states need to ensure that public safety communication is included in the allocation of spectrum in the UHF band.

The switch from analogue to digital services for television offers unprecedented economic and public interest opportunities for Europe. One aspect that merits much more attention is the wide range of benefits the newly available spectrum could have if a dedicated, harmonised portion were to be allocated for emergency services across Europe on general interest grounds.

Public safety service responders provide society with indispensable police, fire and other emergency services. Each individual in our society has the growing expectation of, if not the right to, efficient emergency services.

A recent report commissioned by Motorola and EADS, claims that the current allocation of spectrum is inadequate for emergency services to meet their evolving communication needs and in some cases does not have the capacity to cope with major incidents – potentially putting lives at risk.

The report concludes that dedicated, harmonised spectrum for emergency services would facilitate future broadband capabilities, including accessing and transmitting vital real-time high quality video and other information that could enable more effective responses in emergencies and save lives in day to day situations. The spectrum range that is ideal for these uses lies in the UHF range.

Manfred Blaha, brigadier-general of the Austrian ministry of the interior, speaking at a conference organised in Ljubljana earlier this month, said that spectrum in the UHF band “could be used to provide essential broadband services, such as remotely assessing the situation on the ground as incidents happen or widely circulating pictures of missing children to all police officers on the ground instantaneously; sending data from an ambulance to a hospital on a patient’s condition; or providing fire services with access to inventories of what is being stored in buildings when tackling a blaze. Facilitating this sort of information flow can save vital seconds, critical to the emergency services.”

In Europe, it is increasingly clear that including the needs of the public safety services into the debate on this spectrum band is vital to our society. In November 2007, in the European commission’s communication on the digital dividend, public safety applications, such as protection and disaster recovery (PPDR) services were identified as one of the potential most promising uses of this valuable spectrum.

In March 2008, the commission issued a communication on reinforcing disaster response capacity, calling for measures to enhance broadband and mobile communications for PPDR services, including allocation of bandwidth for communicating in emergency situations. And member states agreed this month on the need to coordinate spectrum usage at EU level and asked the commission to conduct, in cooperation with national governments, the necessary studies and consultations and report on the results of this process at the December council.

Harmonisation is one of the driving forces behind the success of EU integration. This is important for achieving economies of scale and for resolving cross-border interference issues. In 1996, a harmonised allocation of spectrum for public safety services in the range of voice and narrowband data communications was agreed. For more than a decade, these decisions have resulted in an unprecedented success. This resulted in widespread adoption of Europe-wide public safety communications systems.

In my address during parliament’s public hearing on the digital dividend in May 2008, I underlined that parliament’s political support and leadership is critical for the EU to give a political mandate to the electronic communications committee to perform the necessary studies to identify sufficient spectrum from within the UHF band for the services of general interest, including emergency services. I hope that we make the best use of this important opportunity.

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