National Network for First Responders Is Years Away

[karldotcom]

Communications Link for All First Responders Remains a Challenge - NYTimes.com

[cmcgrail]

From the article "Emergency officials who showed up from other cities to help clean up after the hurricane could not talk to New York officials with the radios they had brought from home.

The fourth-generation cellphone technology on which the system is based does not allow, for the foreseeable future, emergency workers in one location to immediately contact each other directly. Rather than push a button on a device, walkie-talkie style, they have to dial a phone number, like any cellphone user, and worry about dropped calls."

Meanwhile, HAM's have been able to do this all along.

[kb2vxa]

Funny that, hams have been experiencing dropped calls long before cell phones were invented, propagation is fickle.

Oh hush, I know what you mean. (;->)

[zerg901]

Dont forget the 20 BILLION in "deficit reduction" - cough - slush fund

NPSTC Releases Need-to-Know List for Public-Safety Broadband Network Prep | Communications content from Fire Chief (go all the way to bottom)

[W2NJS]

The claim that it's impossible for an out-of-town public service unit to communicate with the locals via radio upon arrival is pure bull. There now exist many national emergency PS channels, complete with coordinated PLs, and the system is known as Vtac on VHF and Utac on UHF. I'd bet that many, many local PS agencies know absolutely nothing about the availability of these channels to them. The channels are legal to use by all FCC-licensed PS agencies in the US. However, the idea that a national repeater system would be practical is, at least to my way of thinking, suggestive of a coordination nightmare, but, more important, unnecessary,and probably the result of a daydream by some fat, non-techie politician messing with things he has no knowledge of.

http://www.dhs.gov/national-interope...erations-guide
http://urgentcomm.com/interoperabili...lity-made-easy

[kb2hpw]

Right. Next time Chuck Schumer says he's requesting more "emergency response funding", it means shaking us down for more taxes, to buy more equipment and things that will never be properly installed, trained, and put into service..again.

There is an old phrase that my folks would say; "Everything that was old, will once become new again". For a few decades now the push was to move away from simple, two-way communications, to more modern and complex systems that require all of the infrastructure to be in place to work properly. Surely there have been great advances and features to the new technologies. But it is with great irony that many times the complex systems intended for Emergency Communications, often fail during times of emergency. Not because it isn't good equipment, but perhaps too complex. One day a city manager will see two kids chatting on FRS walkie-talkies and say "Why can't our Dept's do that?". And thus a new generation will discover fire once again

[mmckenna]

Well said.

There is a lot of noise about interoperability, and most of it is nonsense spouted by people that have no clue what they are talking about. Congress has screwed the pooch a few times on this, and they are doing it again.

A nation wide "cellular" like service for public safety might seem logical to average Joe's who's only knowledge or exposure to radio equipment is their cellular phone.
Most law enforcement, fire and other public safety professionals are only radio users. They use their radios like they use a blender, washing machine, etc. They have little, if any, knowledge about how the equipment works.

Congress isn't any better. They are pushing for something that they don't understand. They don't care how it works, how it's built, or who runs it, they just want to look good. Money doesn't mean anything to Congress, there are always buckets of it available, and they pass the debt on to the future, long after they have retired with fat pensions.

Any radio guy will tell you that running a nation wide broadband network for public safety users is going to be a monumental undertaking. The amount of infrastructure alone is going to be on the order of completely rebuilding the public telephone network, all with tax dollars. The frequencies that are planned for this might work well in urban areas, but will be a complete nightmare in rural or even wilderness areas. The number of antenna sites that would have to be built is mind boggling. Having all those sites with redundant systems, links, power, generators, battery back up etc, is not something that any one agency could run. Trying to have local jurisdictions build out their own part of the network and link into the system is a logistical nightmare. Most counties, or even states for that matter, don't have the man power to build out a system like this, never mind keep it running reliably. The issues with the backhaul are pretty big too. The big issues that have been seen in the UASI systems is the backhaul bandwidth needed for these systems. Most of them are needing dedicated fiber networks, and that isn't going to be cheap!

So, if this did happen, even on a limited scale, who do you think is going to run it? DHS? Unlikely, they can't even run airport security. Expecting the states, counties or cities to run this might be a way, but eventually it will get to expensive or labor intensive. AT&T or Verizon will swoop in and offer to run it for the government for a "small fee". That will work for a year or two, then the carriers will decide they need to charge more. and more. and more... When the government complains, they'll offer up the option of them taking over the network completely. That will work for a bit, then they'll decide that they can't keep it reliable enough for what it was intended. They'll request, and no doubt receive, permission to open the network up to non-public safety users, such as utilities, etc. They are already talking about letting such users into the 700MHz networks. So, that will happen, and the glorious nation wide network will then just become part of the cellular network and used to make profits for the carriers. Over time, the redundancy and power back ups will disappear, cellular carriers are already balking against being required to have power back up at their sites (another boondoggle from the FCC).

In the end, public safety users would basically end up with a glorified Nextel system that will be shared with the rest of us. Nextel was already and epic failure for public safety. It's useful for some situations, but I doubt you will find many agencies that willingly rely on that system for life safety communications.

If you ask just about any public safety professional, they'll tell you that they already carry a cell phone, and they use it for work. Rather than pushing us even further into debt, the solution needs to be a simpler design based off existing cellular networks. They already have WPS (wireless priority service) and GETS (Government Emergency Telecommunications System) that gives public safety priority on existing telecommunications networks.

Instead, take the BILLIONS if not TRILLIONS of dollars it would take to build such a network and just start purchasing multi band radios for public safety. Analog is interoperable. Just get users on the same frequencies and the issues can be solved MUCH cheaper and easier. The VTAC, UTAC, ITAC frequencies already exist for VHF, UHF and 700/800MHz. Heck, there are even low band interoperability channels.

There are already solutions out there. What it takes is training, not purchasing more technology. Just because such a system could be built, doesn't mean it should be.

[chrismol1]

Originally Posted by mmckenna

Any radio guy will tell you that running a nation wide broadband network for public safety users is going to be a monumental undertaking. The amount of infrastructure alone is going to be on the order of completely rebuilding the public telephone network, all with tax dollars. The frequencies that are planned for this might work well in urban areas, but will be a complete nightmare in rural or even wilderness areas. The number of antenna sites that would have to be built is mind boggling. Having all those sites with redundant systems, links, power, generators, battery back up etc, is not something that any one agency could run. Trying to have local jurisdictions build out their own part of the network and link into the system is a logistical nightmare. Most counties, or even states for that matter, don't have the man power to build out a system like this, never mind keep it running reliably. The issues with the backhaul are pretty big too. The big issues that have been seen in the UASI systems is the backhaul bandwidth needed for these systems. Most of them are needing dedicated fiber networks, and that isn't going to be cheap!

This ^^
IS this serious, a national network for first responders?
I agree its mind boggling the amount of coverage is insane and that all requires equipment
think about how many hundreds of billions or trillion dollars in the public cell phone network we have now and its far from complete and reliable, I cant even imagine a system run by the government will be bureaucratic disaster.
I'd say a national network like this could be $1-3 TRILLION dollars?? Assembling all that equipment would be YEARS until delivery and installation

"FirstNet said it believed it would reach its ultimate goal of building a network that could be used by any public safety official in the United States, using a standard device that operates on the same frequencies as those of all other departments."

We are barely close to that with the multi hundred billion dollar cell phone network that we have now that started up in the 80's DECADES AGO
These politicians will be long retired if it ever gets going at all

[mmckenna]

It won't happen. No one in their right mind would think this can really happen. There is enough problems getting every one to narrow band. Look how long its taken to rebind 800MHz,and that's been $5 Billion dollars and been going on for years, and only touches a percentage of the public safety systems out there. Now look at the UHF T-band and all the uproar over that. Linking p25 systems might be a possibility, allowing access to other agencies using a central database, but that doesn't address the frequency side of things, which band they are on, all the screw ups with data base and access controls, etc. The solution will likely be existing cell phone services and a combination of multi-band radios and cache radios.

[MTS2000des]

This is the same Federal government that admits they've already spent $340 million dollars on radios for "interoperability" that their own employees don't know how to use:

http://www.oig.dhs.gov/assets/Mgmt/2...3-06_Nov12.pdf

How much of this security theater are we going to finance before we have had enough?

It doesn't work, it's not going to work. First responders need simple, affordable, RELIABLE (meaning NOT dependent on complex infrastrcuture) radios to do their jobs.

They don't need an iPAD on their duty belt, or a fancy UI driven gazillion dollar portable radio they have to take an in-service to operate.

The FCC should be working to protect our part 90 spectrum, not re-farm it or auction it off.

Oh wait, I'm dreaming I know.