Public Safety Advocate: September Ends with IWCE, October Begins with a Roar
Last week was the first live IWCE conference since 2019. Meanwhile, on the last day of September, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted 4-0 in…
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Public Safety Advocate: IWCE 2021 Live in Las Vegas
Since we will be attending IWCE 2021 in Las Vegas all of next week, there will not be time to publish a September 30 issue….
Public Safety Advocate: Data Interoperability Revisited, 4.9-GHz Further Proposed Rulemaking, 6 GHz
After the article about the lack of data interoperability across the FirstNet (Built with AT&T) network appeared last week in the Advocate, I received comments indicating…
Public Safety Advocate: Drones, FirstNet Data Interoperability, Computer-Aided-Dispatch, Muni-Wi-Fi Again?
Drones—Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Concern is growing within the public-safety ranks about citizens flying drones over incidents that call for first responders. When incidents involve…
Public Safety Advocate: Good News for Push-To-Talk Interoperability?, Bad News for 6-GHz Microwave
Last week, several readers pointed out that cloud-based interoperability might not always be best for network-to-network and network-to-Land Mobile Radio (LMR) Push-To-Talk (PTT) interoperability. For…
Public Safety Advocate: Nationwide Interoperability, FirstNet Authority 2022 Budget
Introduction The imminent release of Motorola’s 3GPP-compliant (sans ProSe) Push-To-Talk (PTT) will be the second 3GPP-compliant PTT application available on FirstNet (Built with AT&T). With…
Public Safety Advocate: FirstNet Authority Off-Network Communications Solutions RFI, L3Harris, HPUE
APCO 2021 The APCO 2021 conference is taking place in San Antonio this week. Many attendees come from the public-safety community or are involved in…
Public Safety Advocate: LA City Fire Joins FirstNet, Spectrum Allocations/Interference Issues, Rural Broadband/NG911 Updates
At the end of last week, it was announced that both LA City Fire and LA County Health Department had joined FirstNet. LA County Fire,…
Public Safety Advocate: FirstNet Growth, Another MCPTT Option, FirstNet 10-Year Anniversary Soon, 4.9 GHz
This week we will look at the numbers as FirstNet (Built with AT&T) continues to add more agencies and users and we will discuss its…
Public Safety Advocate: PTT Corrections, CHP Joins FirstNet, Smarter Smartphones, Rural Broadband Feeding Frenzy
First and foremost, Tango Tango Push-To-Talk (PTT) is FirstNet-certified for both the Android operating system and iOS (Apple), not Android-only as stated in the list…
Public Safety Advocate: No Noise Task Force, FirstNet-Certified PTT, NG911
We will start this Advocate with an introduction to the “No Noise Task Force” (NNTF), which operates under the auspices of the Safer Buildings Coalition (SBC). The…
Public Safety Advocate: FirstNet Authority Goes International, Federal Agencies Coordinate Rural Broadband Efforts, NPSTC Awards, AT&T 5G Core in MS Azure Cloud
In this week’s Advocate, I will look at The FirstNet Authority’s expanding role as it works with countries around the world. Also this week, several federal organizations…
Public Safety Advocate: How Many Devices Will First Responders Carry?
The following is a compilation of ideas I presented in a Mission Critical Communications article (August 2019) and in previous Advocates, along with updated information…
Public Safety Advocate: Alphabet Soup – NFPA, PSCR, SBC, L3 XL – The Weather, and T-Mobile
This week’s Advocate is made up of a series of shorter pieces covering items I think the public-safety community should to be aware of, starting with how…
Public Safety Advocate: Is Your Agency Using FirstNet? If Not, Why Not?
Since the build-out of the FirstNet network began, many federal, state, and local public-safety agencies have become part of the growing number of entities using…