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COPYRIGHT 2007 Crain Communications, Inc.
Byline: JEFFREY SILVA
The Senate Commerce Committee greeted Cyren Call Communications Corp.'s public-safety broadband plan with a non-committal mix of interest, skepticism and outright hostility, a reaction compounded by an industry-funded study that concludes the initiative is a risky business proposition and could actually undermine first-responder communications.
Democratic and GOP lawmakers voiced support for improving public-safety communications interoperability and better equipping first responders generally. But none expressed explicit support for a plan widely backed by major public-safety organizations that would require Congress to remove from the auction block half of the 60 megahertz at 700 MHz and put that spectrum in the hands of a trust to oversee the construction of a national public-safety broadband network by the private sector for shared use with police, firefighters, medics and others. First responders-represented along with Cyren Call Chairman Morgan O'Brien at last Thursday's hearing-would have priority access to the network.
Perhaps even more worrisome for Cyren Call and public-safety groups was the virtual silence during the hearing of the lawmaker who called it, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), and the absence of the high-profile lawmaker who promised to champion the...
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