emergency-communications network

Last spring, the Federal Communications Commission held its highly publicized 700MHz auction, the sell-off of the slice of the electromagnetic spectrum that analog television signals will no longer be using as of next February. The auction raised nearly $20 billion for government coffers, and was generally considered to be a rousing success.

The only piece of the 700MHz spectrum that did not sell was the so-called "D Block," a narrow frequency range reserved by the FCC for the development and implementation of a national emergency-responder network.