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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved the Public Safety Spectrum Alliance’s (PSSA) stay request for the previous FCC’s plan to take back the 50 MHz of 4.9-GHz spectrum it had granted to public safety in 2002. Claiming it is under-utilized, the FCC planned to hand this spectrum over to each state. The idea was that each state would award a master lease for the spectrum to a third party, which would then determine what the spectrum would be used for in that state.

Most recently, the FCC issued the Eighth Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for the 4.9-GHz spectrum (Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, WP Docket 07-100). This NPRM contains language which, if accepted by the commissioners, would return the spectrum to the public-safety community…