I think we could have gone to Congress at that time and said, "This is going to cost $15- or $20 billion," and that money would have been attainable. Fast forward to 2007, and all the years of inaction in between them. I don't think that money is easily obtainable now. So now the question is: how do we get this done?
It's my strong impression that the country is not appreciably better prepared for the next 2001 terror attack or the next Hurricane Katrina than it was when those events took place originally. We have to get there, and I'm hoping we can make this public safety/private sector partnership work.
I'm a believer in that kind of collaboration, but I'm not necessarily a believer that it’s where public safety should have started out. I wish we would have gone the other way. We didn't, and now we have to make this work. That is going to take a Herculean effort.
I think the FCC has a better appreciation of the role it can play and is acting more proactively on public safety now than it did four, five, or six years ago. I think the FCC allowed itself to get marginalized in public safety discussions after 2001. We kind of stepped aside and said, "Oh, Homeland Security will take care of all of this." But they still haven't got their act totally together. That's not just personal opinion; a lot of studies have shown that, too.
I don't think we can put together this public safety/private sector partnership without a strong, proactive FCC. We need to make sure several things happen. Number one, the 700 MHz auction has to take place. Number two, the partnership must be clear and the partners, particularly the commercial licensee, must understand that this network has to be built to public safety configurations and that public safety is the decision-making authority.
The commercial licensee can't just run over the public safety people. If you've got a huge company that's controlling the commercial licensee, that's always a danger. So you have to empower the public safety part of that equation, and the FCC needs to be present in all stages of the development of the network agreement, its implementation, and should serve as ‘tiebreaker’ when there are deadlocks or disagreements.
