ate regulatory responsibility by allowing the market to decide technology policy. Out of neces- sity, operators and vendors have to respond to short-term market expectations. These are incompatible with the long-term decisions that need to be taken on future technology options. The US may well end up with well-executed and well-integrated broadband and narrowband public-safety networks but they will be neither technically nor commercially efficient unless a much greater degree of user equipment RF front-end flexibility can be realised. This in turn requires a level of investment to which the industry presently has limited visibility. In Europe and the Rest of the World there is an obvious opportunity to use at least part of the LTE 800 band (between 790 and 862 MHz) to support public-safety broadband connectivity particularly as these bands overlap the Project 25/iDEN bands in the US. This would mean that standard LTE 800 user equipment and network hardware and software could be used in the US public-safety market in the APCO band, providing the global-scale economy needed by the sector. The (rather major) snag with this is that LTE 800 may be deployed as a reverse duplex with mobile RX at 790 to 821 MHz and mobile TX at 831 to 862 MHz. This is because there is concern in the broadcasting community that transmissions from LTE mobile users will interfere with terrestrial TV reception, a process known as 'hole punching'. Alternatively, the band could be deployed as a standard duplex with TV signals retransmitted from cellular base stations. Apart from opening up opportunities for integrated LTE 800/Project 25 public-safety networks we would also get reliable digital TV on portable receivers - always handy in a national emergency and particularly relevant in countries presently attempting to reinvigorate Making Telecoms Work Table 16.8 US and European/ROW 800-MHz band plan implemented as standard duplex EUROPE/ROW MOB TX P25/iDEN/US850 MOB TX LTE 800 806 to 809 Narrowband P25 or iDEN Could also be two by 1.4 or one 