Will DOJ Tech Project Die After 10 Years?: A secure, interoperable radio network that the Department of Justice has been working on for more than a decade and that has cost the agency $356 million may be headed for failure, according to a new report by the agency's inspector general.

According to the report, inadequate funding, frequent revisions to DOJ's plans, and poor coordination threaten the success of the Integrated Wireless Network (IWS) and could leave the agency with obsolete radio equipment that doesn't communicate well with other radio systems, which could in turn pose a threat to public safety.

FCC sees support for incentive auctions of wireless spectrum - chicagotribune.com: Julius Genachowski, the top U.S. telecommunications regulator, said on Wednesday that he has received bi-partisan support from a group of U.S. senators for so-called "incentive" auctions of wireless spectrum without legislative restrictions.

Genachowski, chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, is looking for approval to give broadcasters a financial incentive to return unused spectrum licenses to the FCC so it can then auction off the spectrum to companies offering mobile data services.

Bay Area cities prepare for key vote on public-safety LTE -- Urgent Communications: Representatives of governmental entities in the San Francisco Bay Area are scheduled to vote next Thursday to decide whether their public-safety agencies will participate in the deployment and operation of a much-anticipated LTE network for the region’s first responders that would be built by Motorola Solutions.

Members of the Bay Area Regional Interoperable Communications System (BayRICS) Authority next Thursday are expected to vote on the project, which likely will be smaller than originally envisioned. Proposed as 193-site LTE system, most discussions during last week’s BayRICS Authority meeting called for the number of sites to be reduced by at least 25% and that the public-access component of the proposal may be scrapped.

Verizon blames “growing pains” for LTE 4G outages | VentureBeat: Verizon Wireless may be paying the price for being the first carrier in the world to widely roll out LTE 4G technology.

The carrier has pointed to the relative immaturity of LTE as the reason for its 4G service outages throughout 2011, reports GigaOm, who chatted with Verizon VP of network engineering Mike Haberman yesterday.

Homeland Security gets more cyber funding, less for science research -- Federal Computer Week: Southwestern border technology, scientific research programs and grants for state and local first responders are losing support in the Homeland Security Department’s final budget for fiscal 2012 approved by Congress. Meanwhile, cybersecurity and biosurveillance systems are among the programs gaining expanded funding.

Once upon a time in a land far, far away... | Daryl Jones' Weblog: Once upon a time in the land of Far-Far-Away in the State of Insolvent there were some chiefs from Bewildered County. They had an old-fashioned stupid plain vanilla analog radio system that worked perfectly two thirds of the time, but the other third of the time their radios had a little static.

Even though it almost never-ever failed completely it just wasn’t rosy and perfect. They could still talk to all their neighbors (who had old-fashioned stupid plain vanilla analog radio systems too), but not directly to the Big Department in Crooked County hundreds of miles away, or to the Inspectors from the State of Insolvent or the Men from Far-Far-Away. And most importantly, it just wasn’t shiny and NEW. .....

Communications upgrade for first responders - Washington Times: Congress must decide between a fiscally irresponsible 20th-century model of dedicated, expensive public-safety networks that become rapidly obsolete or a 21st-century model of cost-effective public-private, shared infrastructure. Our country can afford neither billions of dollars to build and operate a new dedicated public-safety network nor the reallocation of commercial spectrum to dedicated public-safety use when a far more cost-effective path forward is available.

Consumers Energy: interoperability, in-house and out | Intelligent Utility: In-house, Gillmore [director of enterprise architecture and standards and chief architect] explained, "guiding principle number one is loosely coupled, layered architectures. You should be able to change layers out without breaking the upper stack. We've taken those principles into our architectural smart grid approach for interoperability. Loosely coupled and layered architecture allows electric meters to be agnostic of the underlying communications technology. Our selected technology allows us to use any of the nation's major wireless carriers. This approach also allows us to use any electric meter technology, as appropriate."