Greetings. This morning, I represented ARRL at a hearing before the House Communications and Technology Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The topic of the hearing was really not conducive to our active participation in the discussion after the testimony, and indeed I was asked no questions at all. But I did get to speak for five minutes to supplement our written testimony, and we made our points. The written testimony is attached. I drafted it, but important parts were contributed by Dave Sumner and especially President Craigie, so this was a collaborative effort, and frankly it came out reasonably well, I think. The hearing was about the creation of an interoperable public safety network (read "broadband public safety network") and the prevailing assumption is that narrowband voice communications for public safety are a thing of the past. The Subcommittee members, especially the Majority, were not happy campers. They wanted to know why they were being asked to allocate another 10 MHz for a public safety network when the 24 MHz at 700 MHz wasn't being used efficiently. No ARRL dog in that fight, thank gosh. The thing is, there seemed to be virtually no level of understanding among either the public safety panelists [consisting of two equipment manufacturers (Harris and Motorola); a systems integrator, a land mobile consultant, a representative of a fire chief association, or the Subcommittee members], that a national broadband public safety network is likely to fail in any given disaster. So our testimony that warned them on that point was important. But the thrust of the hearing was about the fact that the United States has spent some 13 Billion Dollars since 9/11 on the creation of a nationwide public safety network, and it has allocated 24 MHz in the 700 MHz band (12 of which is being used now for narrowband voice communications systems, 2 of which is a guard band, and 10 of which is lying fallow for a broadband public safety network) for the same purpose, and we still don't have one. The panelists were asked various questions boilng down to "Why not, and what do we need to do to get there?" and "What happened to the money, and why is another 10 mHz of the D-Block necessary?" I had plenty I wanted to say about that, but ARRL didn't, so I didn't get asked anything about the main topic of the hearing and didn't talk out of school. There were a few high points though. Greg Walden, the Chairman of the Committee, came in beforehand and talked to each of us. He mentioned during the hearing that he is a radio Amateur and it was clear that he and Anna Eshoo (the ranking minority member of the subcommittee and a big friend of ARRL) were favorably inclined toward us. Jeff Johnson, the Chief Executive of the Western Fire Chief's Association, came over before the hearing and said to John Chwat and me that he had heard Rep. King say publicly that he understood the hams' concern and would make sure that we were not harmed by H.R. 607. We told Jeff Johnson that the problem was that we couldn't find any such public statement anywhere and that we needed to see that in writing from King. Also before the hearing, we were talking to Dave Redl of the Subcommittee staff. Dave said that he had heard from King's staff, and that they were amazed that we were testifying about H.R. 607. Redl told them something to the effect that "you have not suffered until you have aggravated the hams." Chwat told me today that he had received almost 7,000 copies of letters about H.R. 607... Chwat and I have a meeting with Ed Parkinson of King's staff next Tuesday after the long weekend about our CC&R study legislation. We will see what we hear about H.R. 607 at that point. 73, Chris W3KD Christopher D. Imlay Booth, Freret, Imlay & Tepper. P.C. 14356 Cape May Road Silver Spring, Maryland 20904-6011 (301) 384-5525 telephone (301) 384-6384 facsimile W3KD@ARRL.ORG