On November 25, NextNav filed an ex parte with the Federal Communications Commission, highlighting the public safety concerns it heard while attending a First Responder Indoor Tracking Summit hosted by the Fairfax County, VA, Fire and Rescue Department. In the filing, NextNav reiterated that “the presence of safety-related unlicensed systems in the lower 900 MHz band is not a reason to freeze spectrum policy or foreclose new uses, particularly new uses that will provide a significant benefit to public safety.” The filing continued, “It is, instead, all the more reason for the Commission to address any remaining technical questions in a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that allows for full technical analysis, timely comment, and reasoned resolution.” The full filing is available here.
To date, 16 public safety entities have expressed support for the urgent need for a complement and backup to GPS. Some include: Arlington County Fire Department; Arizona Department of Public Safety; California Fire Chiefs Association; City of Springfield Ohio Fire Rescue Division; Fire Chiefs’ Association of Massachusetts; Nevada Division of Emergency Management; San Bernardino County Fire Protection District; and the Texas 9-1-1 Alliance.
Key highlights from the filing include:
During the First Responder Indoor Tracking Summit, Kevin Roche, Phoenix Fire Department (Ret.), described a 2007 incident in Charleston, South Carolina, that cost nine firefighters their lives. He reminded attendees that the technology used to coordinate during an emergency has not changed much since 2007, adding, “If we had x and y for this fire, we wouldn’t be talking about it today. It would have come out much differently.”
The [firefighters] basically ran out of air and wandered around inside the building trying to find their way out. The locations where the firefighters were found include two firefighters very close to the building’s front entrance. It’s only 40 feet from where those two firefighters were found to the front entrance of the building. What a waste. At that time, with the amount of fire and smoke in there, they might as well have been on the moon. One firefighter went all the way to the back of the warehouse and went through a couple of offices at the back. [He] knocked some stuff off of shelving in the back, and ran into a brick wall, and he died right there. So, they did make an effort to get out, but they were not able to.
This tragedy underscores how today’s systems still sometimes fall short when first responders need them most.
In addition, the nation’s reliance on GPS creates a single point of failure. The lack of a complement or backup to GPS means that a disruption or degradation of its signal would deprive first responders of x-y positioning capabilities in the field. NextNav’s 5G-based 3D PNT solution addresses both vulnerabilities, while also improving vertical location information that first responders rely on today.
No other PNT solution proposed in the record has a clear path to integration into dedicated public safety networks, devices, and displays. The First Responder Indoor Tracking Summit focused squarely on addressing the challenge of unreliable and inaccurate location data. A common theme attendees heard was that we cannot let perfection be the enemy of good, and that we need a solution now.
NextNav remains committed to working with the public safety community to give first responders the location information they need to save lives and continues to urge the Commission to promptly issue an NPRM to enable 5G-based 3D PNT in the lower 900 MHz band. To the extent any technical questions remain, they should be addressed in an NPRM and guided by sound, fact-based, and engineering-driven decision making.