The Police Federation of Australia has vowed to be rigorous in its push to reserve the 700MHz frequency on 4G networks for emergency services only.

The Federation says it will take the fight to “every politician in the parliament” in the lead-up to the next election toensure its case is heard. Reports say the Police Federation CEO has already sought meetings with Communications Minister Anthony Albanese, Opposition Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a Greens representative, and Parliamentary Secretary for Broadband Ed Husic.

It will not be an easy fight for the Police Federation of Australia; a recent parliamentary committee report backed its push for a 20MHz slice of the 700MHz band, but that report has been met with almost total silence from political parties. The effort took a second blow when the Government attempted to auction the 700MHz spectrum earlier this year but were not successful in selling it, but still refused to hand it over to emergency services for free.

Instead of the unsold 700 MHz, the Government has offered 10 MHz in the adjacent 800 MHz band for the public safety network project, along with a slice of the 4.9 GHz spectrum.

Police Federation of Australia CEO Mark Burgess says: “We're going to take this to every politician in the parliament, [on] both sides of politics... At the end of the day ... until such time as that spectrum is sold, or it's gone through an auction and someone's bid for it and they've been the successful bidder, as far as we're concerned it's still in play... What's more important — a few dollars through the tills, or Australian public safety?”