President Obama may be hearing the word austerity a lot, but it does not show in his fiscal year 2013 budget, at least not for broadband. While there doesn’t appear to be anything specifically related to broadband deployment in the Department of Agriculture’s budget, the Administration makes up for it in the Department of Commerce’s budget.

The Administration is asking for $10 billion to build an interoperable public safety network. During the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, public safety agencies in different agencies had a hard time talking to each. Different equipment and different frequencies compounded the problem ten years ago and that problem still exists today. Standardizing equipment would be a good start in my opinion. Digital radios with a set of frequencies dedicated to that network would be the next step.