San Francisco Gets LTE 4G Network, But Only For Emergency Authorities

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San Francisco is getting 4G, just not for consumers. Motorola and the public safety agencies of the SF bay area have signed an agreement that will have Motorola building a 700Mhz LTE 4G network for EMS and police services only. It’ll be the first LTE network in the country for public use.

Sheriff Gregory Ahem, Sheriff of Alameda Country, is executive sponsor of the project which involves multiple agencies and a considerable part of the Bay Area. Ahem said:

This is one of the most, if not the greatest, technological advancements in my thirty year law enforcement career, and it will have a huge impact on our abilities to provide improved services to our communities.

I would have gone with the tazer, myself, Greg. At any rate, this network will help police cars interface faster with the database back home, among other uses for police and EMS. Real-life speeds of LTE should be around 5 to 12 Mb/s, which is plenty fast for pulling your records when you get pulled over for talking on your cell phone.

Motorola says that they’ll build the network this year, then have it up and running by 2011. Sounds kind of strange, considering Steve Jobs said in the Antennagate press conference that it takes three years for AT&T to build a new tower in the Bay Area. Maybe Jobs was lying – or maybe AT&T was lying – or maybe towers for public safety uses get built faster.

IntoMobile saws this could be a sign that Verizon’s LTE network could be coming to ‘Cisco soon. Sounds like a stretch to us.