Two auctions held so far accounted for just 24 MHz of the 108 MHz that will eventually be sold. Of the 84 MHz remaining, in 1997 the FCC reserved 24 MHz for public-safety communications, such as police and fire services-those located at four of today's UHF TV channels, 63, 64, 68, and 69. Since the 9/11 attacks on the United States, Congress has been paying a lot of attention to the public-safety communications plan, originally with little fanfare. In fact, congressional eagerness to reallocate the swath of spectrum is the main impetus behind a drive to set a firm date for the transition to digital television. The Save Lives Act of 2005, introduced in the Senate in June, calls for expediting the reassignment of the spectrum for public-safety purposes and requires spectrum to be taken back from broadcasters by 1 January 2009.Although Congress is driving the agenda to free portions of spectrum for public-safety use, local governments will decide how they will be used. Metropolitan-area governments, for example, would like to alleviate the congestion that plagues existing emergency services. They are concerned with voice and text transmission, already in use, and are looking to add wideband transmission of images. On-the-scene images can help emergency responders and their dispatchers. With broadband access to stored records, fire or police teams could review building plans and blueprints.After the auctions held so far and the allocation for emergency services, 60 MHz of the bandwidth to be vacated by analog television remains to be sold [see illustration, "The FCC Auction Plan"]. This section, consisting of channels 52, 53, 56 to 58, 60 to 62, and 65 to 67, is slated to be divided into five blocks. Four of the five will be channel pairs: 52 and 57, 53 and 58, a pair of 5-MHz channels in 60 and 65, and a pair of 10-MHz channels in 61 to 62 and 66 to 67. Channel pairs can best be used for
