Public Safety Advocate: Feds Not Listening, New Products
There is a lot happening this month. Unfortunately, since Congress is taking its usual August break, there won’t be any further action to repeal the T-Band nor will there be…
700 MHz spectrum
Public Safety Advocate: FirstNet or SecondNet?
In The Middle Class Tax Relief Act of 2012 the section known as Title VI created FirstNet and set out the rules for building a nationwide public safety broadband network…
Public Safety Advocate Special Edition
This morning, the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC) published a document intended for distribution to any and all elected federal, state, and local elected officials. This document states clearly and in plain language why Public Safety Land Mobile Radio (LMR) voice systems MUST be maintained even though FirstNet is building out a new Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN).
Building the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network
My advice for the technologists is to continue the good work they are doing but to tone down their technology assessments and predictions with the reality of the time involved and all of the processes and issues that must be addressed and solved, assuming they can be solved. Until then, the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network will remain about data and video, while today’s Land Mobile Radio networks are about mission-critical voice. Both networks will be needed for a very long time to come.
Building the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network
In this, the first of a multi-part series, I will attempt to outline what I believe are the steps that need to be taken to move forward with this network—a network that will both serve the Public Safety community for many years, and that will live up to the Public Safety community’s expectations.
Voice over Public Safety Broadband
The Politics and the Technology As the FirstNet board addresses the architecture for the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network using LTE (Long Term Evolution), one of the issues concerns voice: what to…
The FirstNet Board of Directors
The people needed for the CEO, COO, CTO, and CFO-type of positions reporting to the FirstNet board need to be high-level, skilled people who have been involved in planning and setting up a broadband network and handling the finances, technology, and operational aspects of such a system.
Public Safety Broadband: Measuring Success
This network needs to be built and used by all first responders in order to provide the maximum benefit to the Public Safety community.
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 Broadband at IWCE
If you are interested in finding out more about Public Safety Broadband and LTE, this is the event to attend.
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.
Mission-Critical Voice over LTE: What, When, and How?
This requirement that is contained in the bill presently in the House would, in reality, cripple the Public Safety community and negate all of the progress that has been made toward interoperable voice communications over the past ten years
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.