Emergency Services are traditionally not pushy enough...
First - disclaimer - I am a volunteer fire service person. A CFS officer. So this is emergency services biased.
There is far too much high tech in the comms systems being both used, and proposed. In South Australia someone in government was sold on the idea that all-of-government comms could be implemented using a trunking radio network. So the fire service, police, ambulance, ... all use something called the GRN (a Motorola trunking radio network). This system operates in the UHF 400MHz area.
Now, we also have hills. My own area in the Adelaide hills is, well, *hilly*. Did anyone ever consider what happens to UHF carriers in hilly areas? Apparently not. Did anyone ever consider the propagation issues when you are surrounded by 15m+ high flames - again, apparently not.
This network is used for command and control functions. It is also woefully under-provisioned. One of our fine national carriers has the gong for running the inter-cell backhaul on the network. Apparently, more capacity can be got when needed. By some mechanism that probably involves the minister (I'm a volunteer - I don't deal with this crap). We had a fire a couple of years back where I needed to talk to what was essentially the forward command person, who was parked in a vehicle about 50m away. I could *not* get through via the GRN network - because it was over congested (computer said "no"!). I ended up leaving the appliance and walking the 50m (something of a fitness programme, no doubt part of the hidden "benefit" of using a trunking network...). The congestion arose because (amongst other things) all the busses (!!!) have GRN handsets and were calling back to HQ complaining that the road (the major freeway out of Adelaide through the hills) had just been closed by the fire service..
Because of the parlous state of this "communications" system, we also have VHF handsets for use on the fire ground. So you can at least call the appliance you can SEE!
Now, it would be lovely to have more channel capacity - because when it hits the fan, you need to talk RIGHT NOW. Reserving the channel capacity is basically the only feasible solution. If I need to call because my crew is in danger, I need it RIGHT BLOODY NOW. I also need it to work. When bad things happen, they happen fast and everyone wants to phone their loved ones simultaneously. Any kind of channel sharing thing will simply annoy people and cause the emergency services delay and angst. You set the capacity aside and it hardly gets used. Big deal. The lustful eyes of the telcos/TV/Radio/whatever people just need to be kept off the channel.
Emergency services should not have to go cap-in-hand to the agency responsible. They should not even have to lay money on the table. This is basic infrastructure that a civil society actually NEEDS to function. The money makers just need to accept that not everything should be sold off.
Anyway, sorry for the rant.