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Those who have followed public-safety communications over the past dozen or so years probably know about the Public Safety Spectrum Trust (PSST) and the Public Safety Alliance (PSA). While created for different reasons, these two organizations worked closely together during the four-year run-up to the passage of the bill that created FirstNet in 2012.
The PSST was formed as a public-safety not-for-profit so it could qualify to be designated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as the license holder for the first nationwide public-safety broadband spectrum, which at the time was 5 MHz X 5 MHz (10 MHz total) that had been converted from what was then called “wide-band spectrum.” The FCC issued the license to the PSST in 2007, six years before FirstNet. Two years later in 2009, the PSST and the PSA endorsed the broadband technology known as Long-Term Evolution (LTE) or 4G to be used for the Nationwide Public-Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN)…
