Sale of spare bandwidth could put public at risk Public safety at risk: The emergency services are in competition with the telecommunications industry for unused bandwidth. The communications regulator has failed to give emergency services sufficient bandwidth to deal with a natural disaster or terrorist attack, prompting concerns about public safety, a parliamentary committee has heard. But the emergency services are in competition with the telecommunications industry, which will pay hundreds of millions for access to the unused spectrum and wants it reserved for commercial purposes. Emergency services told a Parliamentary Joint Committee this week that the Australian Communications Media Authority, the federal regulator, should give them more bandwidth. Use of the spectrum allows for wireless communication, and is administered and sold by ACMA, the independent regulator, but revenue from spectrum sales go to the federal government. The technology is primarily used by the telecommunications industry for its mobile networks, but also will enable emergency personnel to wirelessly share vision and data from live unfolding situations such as bushfires. Although ACMA has already provided emergency services with 10Mhz of spectrum, law enforcement bodies say that the allocation should be doubled. Last month ACMA auctioned spectrum to telecommunications companies in a sale worth around $2 billion. Some went unsold and emergency services are now requesting part of the unpurchased bandwidth. Police Federation of Australia CEO Mark Burgess said that emergency services needed two-thirds of the unsold spectrum to be better equipped in the event of a natural disaster or terrorist attack. "When you have a major incident, we are going to need more than just 10MHz to wirelessly share real-time information," he said. The federation has the support of the premiers of NSW, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia, who wrote to the Prime Minister last year, saying more spectrum was needed "to meet the current and future needs of our public safety agencies, whose work is vital for the protection of life and property." But the requests have been meet with opposition from the telecommunications industry. Telstra, which spent $1.3 billion on spectrum at ACMA's auction, said in its submission the bandwidth would be needed in the future to meet "the continuing growth in demand for commercial mobile broadband services." ACMA said an independent committee had come to the decision to allocate only 10MHz to emergency services after having "studied several public safety operational scenarios." ACMA said the spectrum provided would adequately meet emergency services needs, and it was not efficient to allocate a "large quantity of spectrum that would be, for the most part, under-utilised." The additional spectrum which emergency services are requesting would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars in government revenue if auctioned. The federation has accused ACMA of being arrogant and "overly influenced by the commercial carriers' views." The inquiry is not expected to be completed until after the federal election in September.