Public Safety Advocate: It Takes a Disaster to Prompt a Change
It took a long time to establish FirstNet, will it take as long to close the Digital Divide? In our history, there have been many times when it was apparent…
It took a long time to establish FirstNet, will it take as long to close the Digital Divide? In our history, there have been many times when it was apparent…
Dear Members of the U.S. House and Senate: There are bills pending in both the House and Senate that need your attention now! We understand you are facing many pressing issues…
There has been a lot of activity over the last few weeks around both Land Mobile Radio Push-To-Talk (LMR PTT) and FirstNet/LTE PTT with the introduction of the first two…
I have been commenting about the FCC chairman seeming to feel many segments of our spectrum resources need to be opened up for access to yet more WiFi services. Perhaps…
Regular Public Safety Advocate followers are probably familiar with an expression I picked up years ago that remains true today: “Paper does not refuse ink.” It is also true that when the…
First, a sincere thank you to public-safety professionals for putting others’ lives ahead of your own, and thanks to the professionals in Emergency Communications Centers (ECCs), law enforcement, fire, and…
FirstNet was created to facilitate cross-agency public-safety communications, no matter where agencies are called to serve. The rationale behind FirstNet is to enable a team from California, for example, when…
A few hours before time to email this week’s Advocate I was informed that finally, after what seems forever, The FirstNet Authority has appointed Ed Parkinson to the position of full-time CEO….
Over the next few months, but not every week, I will be expanding on this week’s article about Land Mobile Radio (LMR) networks and commercial broadband networks, with an emphasis…
I recently commented here about T-Mobile and others confusing both the public-safety community and the citizens of the United States with its lack of specifics about 5G data rates and…
There is only one vetted and approved FirstNet public-safety broadband network and it was created as a private/public partnership by Congress. It is NOT a commercial broadband network even though it is…
Southern Linc, which replaced its Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (iDEN) with an LTE network built by Ericsson, originally chose Motorola’s Wave for its Push-To-Talk (PTT) solution. Now Southern Linc has…
Many of you may have read the headlines about the Government Accountability Office (GAO) review of the status of FirstNet. On the whole, the GAO gave FirstNet (Built with AT&T)…
Let me start this last Advocate of January by saying I am honored to be nominated as the IWCE Critical Communications Leader of the Year. The other nominees are all people I respect…
Public safety has been using Land Mobile Radio (LMR) communications since the 1930s, broadband data is the new kid on the block, and FirstNet is even newer but has grown…