“The FCC’s narrowbanding initiative will impact virtually every business, agency, and department in America that relies on the two-way radio as a tool for everyday business communications, all the way through mission-critical communications, where lives are at stake,” said Jerry Denham, President and CEO of BearCom. “As the largest dealer and integrator of wireless technology equipment in America, we take very seriously our responsibility to communicate industry developments, so that our current and prospective customers are not caught off guard.”

BearCom’s white paper describes the narrowbanding process, the origins of the initiative, and the FCC’s ultimate objective. It compares narrowbanding to a music concert: “Let’s say you have an event where there are more people who want to attend than there are tickets. The concert promoter, in such a case, has two choices. The resolution can be left to the secondary market—in this example, the scalpers and ticket brokers—to dictate the price of the tickets to concert goers. Or the promoter can add another concert date, increasing supply to meet the growing demand.”

“In this analogy, the FCC is like the concert promoter, the spectrum capacity is like the concert date, and the commercial, educational, and government users of two-way radios are like the concert goers. The FCC wants to increase the capacity—or spectrum efficiency—for these users, and the recent advances in two-way radio technology have created the wherewithal to make available more channels for wireless communication—or to continue the analogy, more concert dates.”

This is where BearCom comes in, given its menu of wireless technology products and solutions. For example, BearCom is the largest dealer of Motorola two-way radios nationwide. Motorola, as explained in the white paper, has gone to great lengths to prepare for narrowbanding and has developed products that can cost efficiently transition commercial and government users, making them compliant along the way.

“The narrowbanding initiative represents a double-edged sword for those entities that rely on wireless communications. You can take advantage of it and become a much more efficient user of such technology. Or you can simply ignore the initiative, wait until the last possible minute, and squander the potential benefits,” said Denham.

As the narrowbanding paper points out, users who do not make the switch by January 1, 2013, face the loss of their communication capabilities. Ian Torok, Director of Technical Services at BearCom, said, “As the 2013 deadline looms closer, wireless providers will be busy assisting their current and new customers with new system designs and new radio purchases. Also, when the deadline passes and users are caught operating out of compliance, they risk losing their current FCC license, and reapplying can be costly and very time consuming.”

Download a free copy of the narrowbanding white paper from the Resource Library on BearCom.com.

About BearCom
BearCom provides a broad line of high-performance wireless communications products, services, and complete mobility solutions. Founded in 1981, BearCom is America’s only nationwide dealer of wireless communications equipment, serves customers from 26 branch offices located throughout the U.S., has several affiliated offices around the world, and employs approximately 400 people. BearCom is headquartered in the Dallas, Texas area. For more information, visit www.BearCom.com.