Motorola has received $50.6 million in grant funding from the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to build public-safety LTE network in San Francisco in the 700 MHz band.

The NTIA grant will be funding the Bay Area Wireless Enhanced Broadband (BayWEB) program through the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP).

The BTOP funding will leverage Project Cornerstone, an LTE demonstration project using an experimental FCC license, to include the larger Bay Area utilizing almost 200 pre-existing sites. Additionally, this funding will provide a public access network to serve schools, hospitals, libraries and community colleges throughout the greater San Francisco Bay Area Region.

The BayWEB project will directly address the many challenges that public safety faces in the Bay Area by providing first responders with a hardened public safety network that will be available in emergencies, natural disasters and catastrophic events, while also providing community anchor institutions, business and residential end users with affordable Internet access services.

Last month, Public Safety Agencies had selected Motorola to build 700 MHz LTE Network in San Francisco Bay Area. The LTE system installation would start this year and is expected to be operational in early 2011.

According to Motorola, first phase includes an LTE core, 10 sites and 330 Motorola Public Safety LTE user modems to provide Bay Area responders access to a host of media rich applications delivered over the new broadband network for increased public safety information sharing.