There's a lot of confusion on this issue not just in NJ, but everywhere. Think of FirstNet as "Public Safety Tel." It's going to look a lot like another 4G cellular carrier that's running LTE. In fact, one of its reps made a statement that it will be an "MVNO" or "mobile virtual network operator" in its earliest implementations. What that means is they will be riding on someone else's network and doing all of the admin work instead of the actual carrier.
What goes on it? Anything. It doesn't care. It's transport. Just like a highway, it doesn't care if there's a truck, bus, or sports car driving on it. Push something in and it comes out on the other side. Assuming adequate bandwidth (and in a fixed block of spectrum that only comes with lots of smaller sites and reuse of spectrum), that could mean voice, data, or video. Add machine-to-machine to that list, too.
How can voice run over data? P25, DMR, NXDN, TETRA, and other formats are nothing more than voice converted to data and then transmitted. The voice can be converted into data, then, instead of using a radio system, it uses a 4G network.
Can it replace existing radio at this moment? No. Unfortunately some politicians were told by whomever that it can. The people who told them that "misrepresented the truth" (lied). There are too many things that need to be worked out and it's not ready for primetime.
Will it ever replace existing radio? That seems to be the plan within the next 10 to 15 years (give or take, depending on where you are in the country). The metropolitan areas go first and the rural areas may never go.
Is this only public safety? My impression is that the selected network operator will be a "public-private partnership" that sells excess capacity on the network for revenue to build out the system. In essence, lower priority private and critical infrastructure (if they don't go with Morgan O'Brien's new venture) will fuel the machine to push the system build-out.
Can an "app" emulate a two-way radio? Yes. The major manufacturers are pumping R&D dollars into products. Some of them look like tablets. Some look like smartphones. Some look like portable radios.
Can an app be reliable enough for life safety? Unknown. The manufacturers are pushing their systems for administrators and non-line positions, but it's all an evolving experiment. What you can see right now is interchange between LTE and existing trunked systems, with no distortion between the LTE user and the trunked user because the LTE device is using the same vocoding algorithm that's in the radio. Still, these things can't do simplex or off-network. Even if you and I are standing next to each other, my radio can't talk to your radio without bouncing vocoded data packets around the network like pinball. Who knows what will happen in "fly-over land" where there isn't enough revenue recoupment expected on investment.
Why is this appealing to agencies? Most of them want to give up having to maintain their own systems that limit them to a given footprint and have to be refreshed every so often. FirstNet and the selected system operator would take care of infrastructure and the subscriber equipment would probably have an 18 month lifecycle (or so the buzz indicates).
Can I monitor this? No. It's RF and you can "see" RF on a spectrum analyzer, and if you have a very expensive piece of test equipment, you could probably "see" data packets flying around, but these will be encapsulated in encryption - whether the user wants to be encrypted or not. Besides, much of it will be non-voice and would be meaningless outside of the application that's supposed to receive it. Much, if not all of it, will be from device to device, meaning it won't be "broadcast." If your device registered in, great. If it didn't, none of that information will be sent to it.
Game over? Not exactly. Some agencies recognize the community relations value of people listening in. They can stream voice traffic which effectively allows you to monitor it. It won't exactly be the same as scanning, but it could be close if the agency is persuaded that there is value to it. The added benefit is the agency can log your IP address and whatever metadata they can get when you're listening. Or, they could have people who are "registered" (or "subscrbed"... subscribed sounds nicer... doesn't matter, same thing) to monitor and lock out the ones who they don't know. That could be neat or scary or both. (On a side note, a hobbyist's most valuable commodity is his or her vote.)
For "responders" this CAN represent
a new age of situational awareness. "Augmented reality." Or, it could represent information overload. All that awaits.
This is my understanding of what's going on. It's taken me a while to figure out some of that stuff, but putting it down somewhere helps me understand it, too. If I have anything out of kilter, let me know. I hope it took away some of the confusion - but if you're like me and grew up listening to all of the stuff in NJ that used to be on low band, that probably got replaced by another set of confusion. The only things for sure: 1) this has a lot of momentum; and 2) things will change. How or when (if ever)? I don't know.
