The FCC’s Rebanding Order, accepted by Sprint Nextel in February 2005, was designed to protect public safety communications within the 800MHz spectrum from interference by FCC-licensed commercial mobile-telephone services. The FCC’s Rebanding Order requires Sprint Nextel to pay each affected Licensee those actual costs associated with its Rebanding Order, inclusive of equipment, vendor, internal, technical consultant and legal costs.

TCS started development of its rebanding assistance approach in October 2004, well in advance of the FCC’s Final Order. Today we are providing comprehensive assistance to over forty Licensees. We typically begin our assistance in the early stages by helping Clients define planning costs for their rebanding needs and negotiations of cost recovery with Sprint-Nextel.

Once a Planning Funding Agreement has been reach, the true work of rebanding begins. Our consultant teams work to identify the types of infrastructure equipment in use that would be impacted by rebanding. We also work to identify user equipment models that might require replacement due to their inability to be retuned to new frequencies or, in the case of NPSPAC channels, automatically compensate for necessary reduced transmitter deviation and channel reuse objectives.

Next, our consultants interview user agencies to develop a framework from which vendors must conduct the retuning process with the least intrusion onto existing-network operations and reliability as possible. In some instances, due to channel loading, replication of an entire system’s functionality many be required to prevent unacceptable levels of network access.

Unlike for commercial radio systems where interruptions in service or network access can be tolerated, there is no ability to tolerate interrupts or delays in life-critical public safety radio communication. Thus, our consultants are always conservative in the development of conceptual implementation and migration plans, later offered for vendor consideration through specifications.

Once foundation work is completed, our consultants develop client-specific Rebanding Issues Documents. These documents serve as a minimally-acceptable set of specifications from which pre-qualified vendors are solicited to develop their specific work plans, equipment plans and implementation cost proposals. TCS then reviews the vendor submittal for accuracy and may recommend ways to streamline the process, improve reliability or reduce costs. Once a generally acceptable vendor proposal is in hand, we work with the Licensee to identify internal costs, using the vendor’s work plan as a project flow guide. Finally, vendor, Licensee, Consultant and Legal costs are submitted as a package for consideration by Spring Nextel and the FCC’s Transitional Advisor (TA).

Through a series of negotiations, a final rebanding agreement is next determined and the work is schedule for commencement. After this agreement stage is passed, rebanding closely resembles a typical new-system or existing-system modernization process whereby TCS acts as the Licensee’s technical advisor. Normal consultant activities during this implementation stage would include monitoring of work progress, staged reviews of vendor workmanship, monitoring of user radio reprogramming activities, testing of rebanded infrastructure equipment, migration assistance and resolution of vendor punch list items.