Disaster Relief

Michael Calabrese on Cyren Cell in Los Angeles Times

Communications — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 15:53:00 -0500

New America in the News:

WASHINGTON — Morgan E. O'Brien is used to jolting the wireless industry. Now the Nextel co-founder is back in the start-up business and again aiming to shake up the airwaves...

This time, the 62-year-old entrepreneur is pitching a controversial plan to transform public safety communications while also extending high-speed wireless Internet service to hard-to-reach rural areas.

His attempt to gain federal approval for his idea may be his biggest challenge yet. Supporters laud him as a visionary. Detractors brand him a profiteer...

O'Brien wants Congress to turn over a large chunk of valuable public airwaves — a multibillion-dollar swath of spectrum coveted by wireless phone companies — to a nonprofit trust operated by public safety officials in partnership, he hopes, with his new McLean, Va.-based company, Cyren Call Communications Corp. Together, they would build a state-of-the-art, high-speed network covering more than 99% of the U.S. population...

[Some] say O'Brien's plan is nothing more than a boondoggle.

"Public safety is just a fig leaf to profiteering," said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank...

For the complete article, please visit the Los Angeles Times website.

From TV to Public Safety

Communications — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 14:15:00 -0400

A New America Event
10/26/2006 - 12:15pm

After watching first responder communications systems fail on 9/11 and after Hurricane Katrina, with tragic results, the vital importance of spectrum management for public safety communications has taken center stage in recent years. Congress recently passed legislation to reallocate 24 MHz of prime spectrum from TV to public safety in 2009, as part of America’s transition from analog to digital television. Currently, this new spectrum is set to be managed under the same assumptions and orthodoxies as current public safety spectrum allocations -- in which spectrum and equipment are designated exclusively for public safety; management is highly decentralized, without national or regional coordination; and narrowband voice communication is the principal application.

Is it time to consider fundamental reform in the way new public safety spectrum is managed? In a new paper released at this forum, Jon M. Peha, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, argues that fundamental reform would make it possible to achieve critical goals of interoperability, spectral efficiency, dependability, and security while lowering costs and providing access to more advanced mobile data applications. Peha argues that such reforms could include: moving toward a consistent nationwide network architecture, allowing commercial carriers to operate public safety networks, and making greater use of shared municipal and commercial broadband wireless networks for data applications. Click here for video of Peha's presentation at this event.

At the forum itself, participants debated alternative proposals for public safety spectrum reform. Michael Gottdenker, CEO of Access Spectrum, described an incremental approach to reorganize newly-allocated public safety bands to promote efficient use of spectrum, while Morgan O’Brien, CEO of Cyren Call and co-founder of Nextel, outlined his controversial proposal to use 30 MHz of returned TV band spectrum to build a shared commercial/public safety network.

Other panelists, including David Aylward, Director of the COMCARE Alliance, and Robert LeGrande of the Spectrum Coalition for Public Safety, reacted to these proposals and offered alternative approaches to support wireless broadband data applications for first responders. These various approaches to reform also were contrasted with current plans for the management and use of new public safety spectrum.

Full-length video of the event is available at right, while an MP3 audio recording, presentation materials and other supporting documents can be downloaded below.

Volunteer on the Road

Articles — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 23:19:00 -0400

Generally speaking, you don’t want a crowbar or a wheelbarrow to feature prominently in your vacation photos. Or rubble. Or poverty (unless, perhaps, it is the exotic kind -- a shoeless boy with oil-black hair; a woman carrying vegetables to the market). But that is just the kind of experience Daniel Johnson sought out earlier this year when he organized a trip to coastal Mississippi with a few dozen officemates from Credit Suisse New York. "All along Route 10, from New Orleans, you could see the devastation," the 45-year-old managing director recalls. And then there was Biloxi: "It was run… more

Katrina Aftermath Needs More Politics

Articles — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 16:47:00 -0400

If the Democrats and their allies in the media have their way, 8/29 will become another 9/11.

This left-leaning alliance isn’t there yet, in terms of making the sale to the country -- Hurricane Katrina as the domestic doppelganger of 9/11 -- but they are working on it.

And so Republicans have no choice, of course, but to play the Katrina blame game, too. Which is to say, Katrina is now "in play" as a political football. And on the whole, that’s a good thing, because just as 9/11 proved this is a dangerous world of terrorism, so Katrina, which hit a… more

Katrina: A Year Later

Communications — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 21:35:00 -0400

Almost a year after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, media attention remains riveted on the rebuilding of New Orleans. But what happened to the estimated 1.5 million people who fled their flooded and destroyed homes in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana?

The Katrina-spawned diaspora is arguably the largest in U.S. history. Federal statistics suggest that about 1 million evacuees from the hurricane-damaged areas have returned to their homes. That leaves a diaspora population of about half a million people.

Where did they go? What happened to them?

Surprisingly, there are few answers to these questions. Many Gulf Coast residents decamped to Baton Rouge,… more

CRFB Criticizes Abuse of Emergency Spending Designation

Communications — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 06:00:00 -0400

Please see the attached PDF version below.

Storm Trooper

Articles — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0400

What words does one use to describe the story of a Christian lesbian Air Force pilot-turned-journalist-turned-Katrina-relief-activist -- a story with a distinctly faith-based "thousand points of light"-y voluntaristic orientation? Two words leap to mind: "Cholene Espinoza." I can say that after reading her fascinating and thought-provoking memoir, Through the Eye of the Storm: A Book Dedicated to Rebuilding What Katrina Washed Away

Espinoza grew up in New Mexico and graduated from the US Air Force Academy in 1987. Becoming only the second woman to fly the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, she was awarded the Air… more

Ideological Hurricane

Articles — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Last September's tragedy in New Orleans revealed, in the starkest manner, the soft underbelly of America's cities. After all the 1990s rhetoric insisting that "Cities are back!" we got a glimpse behind the facades of a major urban center and tourist mecca which revealed many utterly dependent and disorganized residents, looking more like Third Worlders than denizens of a modern metropolis. In the process, the urban liberalism that has dominated city administration for the last generation was unmasked.

New Orleans as paragon of a hollowed-out city

To be sure, New Orleans is a unique case. Built below… more

Shelter and the Storm

Articles — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 04:00:00 -0500

Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, is a hub of oil and fishing industries on the Gulf of Mexico. The hamlets along its waterways rise in elevation and affluence as they increase in distance from the coast. Trailers, aluminum foil in their windows to beat back the sun, give way to communities screened by oak and cypress trees. One of the loveliest neighborhoods is Bayou Black. There are thoroughbreds on lawns there, and an alligator farm. The week's sole rush hour begins Saturday before dawn, when fathers and sons leave home to fish and hunt. Later that morning, the shell-pink great house of… more

Paying for Katrina: Closing the Fiscal Gap

Communications — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 15:00:00 -0500

A New America Event
11/14/2005 - 12:11pm

The New America Foundation, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and the Committee for Economic Development convened a forum on the budget deficit in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Entitled "Paying for Katrina: Specifics for Closing the Fiscal Gap," and covered live by C-SPAN 2 on Monday, November 14, 2005, the forum featured experts from a diversity of ideological perspectives.

Despite this diversity, there was a surprising degree of consensus among the panelists, who expressed universal alarm with our current fiscal position. Describing our budget woes as a "fiscal Cassandra," Bob Bixby of the bi-partisan Concord Coalition warned that if policy makers continue to ignore mounting budget deficits, the damage to the U.S. economy will be comparable to the physical damage wrought in New Orleans: "Katrina is a metaphor for the federal budget: we knew this was a danger for years