 user is out on an eight- hour shift on foot or bike or horseback (not an uncommon requirement in crowd control situations). 4 http://www.p25.com/. Satellite Networks 16.14 Policy Issues and Technology Economics So the suitability of LTE for public safety in the US depends partly on spectral allocation and auction policy, partly on technology policy, partly on the application mix and partly on available budgets. It seems unlikely that LTE 700-MHz networks on their own could meet all the needs of the public safety and/or SMR sector. This means that it will be impossible to discontinue either P 25 or iDEN radio and network system development and deployment. This loads parallel product development manufacturing and test cost onto the sector. Some of this cost could be reduced if future iterations of P25 and iDEN could be dovetailed into the Release 10 (LTE Advanced) standards process. A 5 MHz channel could be used for LTE leaving sufficient channel bandwidth for narrowband Project 25 voice connectivity. This would of course be entirely possible but presently improbable due to understandable vested interest both in the specialist radio vendor and specialist user community. Sector procurement policy is also understandably cautious about what might be perceived as relatively radical change. While it is possible to design military specification radios that can access multiple bands using multiple technologies, these devices are neither low cost nor particularly energy efficient. They are also heavy. Public safety and emergency-response user requirements could be best met by flexible radios capable of accessing commercial LTE radio bands and the public-safety bands with RF performance at least as good as existing specialist radio products at a price point close to consumer price expectations. At present it seems unclear as to how this will be achieved. The US 700-MHz band plan is a salutary example of what happens when spectral allocation and auction policy is decided by economists who ignore engineering advice and abrog