EWA Supports Maine Waiver Request

(McLean, VA) – Enterprise Wireless Alliance (EWA) has filed comments supporting the waiver request from the State of Maine that seeks to utilize a substantial number of VHF channels that are coordinated on a primary basis by the American Association of Railroads (AAR) for a new, statewide, narrowband VHF trunked P25 radio system. The proposed system would be available to all public safety agencies in the State of Maine and would also permit interoperability with federal public safety entities.  EWA disagreed with AAR’s unwillingness to issue even a single concurrence that would normally result from standard site-based frequency coordination processes, and argued that AAR’s claim that it need not concur with the request because the State of Maine is “ineligible to use LR (railroad frequencies)” as being contrary to a 2007 FCC Order which denied AAR’s request seeking only exclusive railroad use on the affected VHF spectrum.  

EWA also noted that it is unrealistic for AAR to rely on the premise that the spectrum was needed for the implementation of a national railroad narrowbanding plan, a plan that was created in 1999 and should already be well into implementation, given the upcoming January 1, 2013, narrowbanding deadline.  

EWA also noted that with continued spectrum demand and the outlook for additional spectrum allocations virtually non-existent, that all PLMR applicants, including public safety, need to consider whether all operations require exclusive use channels.  If the VHF public safety spectrum is depleted in the State of Maine, which is the premise of the State’s waiver request, then the situation can only be worse in other, more populated, locations.  EWA stated that “(I)it may be necessary to distinguish operations that must have channel assignment exclusivity from those whose communication requirements could tolerate use of a shared channel where channel access exclusivity is achieved through technological capabilities.”