Advocate Newsletter


Public Safety Broadband!

This means that all of the work that has been done by and on behalf of Public Safety over the last five years has been rewarded with the spectrum, the funding needed to start building out the nationwide network, and funding to provide for governance of the network.



Public Safety Communications and the U.S. Congress

As we begin 2012, an election year, the Public Safety community remains solidified in its desire for the proper legislation to be passed. The issue of the reallocation of the D Block to Public Safety has now been addressed by both Houses of Congress and by both parties within both houses. However, there still remain some differences between what the Senate has proposed in S911 and what the House majority leadership is promoting.



Comments: NIST Draft Report

It is difficult for those who created the Internet and grew up with its influence to understand that there are several types of communications with needs that cannot be met simply by embracing the premise that the Internet and IP-based packet systems can solve everyone’s needs all of the time.


Partnerships and Public Safety Broadband

It has always been the vision of the Public Safety Community to work with commercial wireless network operators to provide off-loading of non-emergency traffic onto commercial networks when needed, and to further work with commercial network operators with cell site sharing and even network backhaul



Public Safety Broadband: Real-World Testing Results

Ten years after 9/11, there is no excuse for not providing the Public Safety community with the tools it needs to better serve all of us. This becomes even more important when the Public Safety community has seen layoffs at a local level because of a lack of funding. Doing more with less takes the right tools, and in this case the right tool is a robust Public Safety-only broadband network that has 20 MHz of spectrum available.


Mission-Critical Voice and LTE: Be Careful!

Do not ignore continued investment in existing mission-critical analog and P25 voice systems because you believe voice over LTE broadband that is mission-critical is just around the corner. Many elected officials in federal, state, and local agencies seem to believe this so continued investment in existing channelized voice systems is not needed


LTE Support for Mission Critical Voice for Public Safety

IF LTE broadband can meet both the voice and the data requirements of the first responder community, a single device could be deployed that would provide not only data/video interoperability, but voice interoperability as well. This would be an ideal situation and one that is worth pursing. However, existing narrowband spectrum should not be reallocated for other uses until such time as LTE broadband can and does meet all of the requirements for Public Safety mission critical voice as well as data and video services.



Public Safety LTE Deployments

Another lesson from these tests is that when the network was overloaded, that is, we tried to push more data and video over the system than it could handle, not only was the last data or video unusable, it also rendered existing data and video transmissions that were already in use unusable or at least unstable.


My Most Recent FCC Filing

However, it is my contention, and that of many others, that while the FCC does need to impose some rules that will help ensure nationwide interoperability, many of the items in the FNPRM should remain the purview of the various standards bodies that are working on the LTE and subsequent air-interface standards and that many other items should be determined by a Nationwide Network Governance Entity (NNGE).