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…
Advocate Newsletter
Public Safety Advocate: Open Letter to Congress—Public Safety Needs Your Help Now
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…
Public Safety Advocate: LMR and FirstNet, NOT LMR Migrating to FirstNet Only Anytime Soon
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…
Public Safety Advocate: What’s Up with the FCC?
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…
Public Safety Advocate: Intra-Operable Networks, T-Mobile Ex Parte Filing
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…
Public Safety Advocate: Adding Wireless Routers, Broadband Overload, High-Power User Equipment
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…
Public Safety Advocate: Disasters, Interoperability, FirstNet Updates, What’s Still Missing
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…
Public Safety Advocate: FirstNet Authority Appoints CEO, Reality of FirstNet Coverage, T-Band
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…
Public Safety Advocate: Networks, Devices, Push-To-Talk
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…
Public Safety Advocate: The 5G Wedding Cake, More Networks/Less Interoperability, Open Standards
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…
Public Safety Advocate: A Tale of Three States
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…
Public Safety Advocate: Another MCPTT Vendor? FirstNet Coverage, Drive Tests
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)…
Public Safety Advocate: GAO FirstNet Report, Needed from Congress NOW!
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…
Public Safety Advocate: An Honor, A Correction, DHS Shared Communications Report
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…
Public Safety Advocate: FirstNet, Land Mobile Radio
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…