I’m not up on the down in the weeds parts of how FirstNet works so maybe my concern is not an issue. I was offered an early version of a preferred cell number that gave me basically ruthless preemption over regular cellular users. I was in a room full of EM people and they were all eager to have it. I was the only one who turned it down because I felt it was unethical.
Ruthless preemption is pretty extreme, and I would agree with you on the ethics part. However, I do have a FirstNet phone and am happy to have it.
There are levels of preemption, not everyone has the same level. Also, it only preempts others when there are no other resources available.
It's not intended as an "I'm better than the general public" thing, it's intended as a resource when the message has to get through. However, FirstNet/AT&T seems to be peddling this to damn near everyone, including teachers, and it's getting a bit silly.
To be fair and spread the blame around, Verizon has a similar service, so avoiding AT&T won't protect anyone.
WPS is another service, but it allows the end user to select it when needed. It also doesn't kick anyone else off, it just bumps you to the head of the line. I have WPS/GETS in addition to the FirstNet phone, and there has been one or two instances where WPS/GETS got me through when needed.
Fouci is highest paid government employee—make of it what you will.
Well, since you brought it up, he does have an impressive list of qualifications, experience, degrees and the like, and that usually results in higher pay in the civilized world. Kind of like a brain surgeon getting paid just
slightly more than a 17 year old deep frying french fries at a fast food joint.
In an emergency PS has its own communications systems and infrastructure. Civilians have only cellphones to communicate and solve problems (& save lives) for themselves while waiting for a professional to show up, if ever. The idea that PS is going to steal their bandwidth when they need it most is unconscionable to me. The carriers will argue that they will increase capacity to cover the preferred clients but as we should know from experience they will devise a plan that leverages the normal channels to fill in for unusual load from the preferred clients (an emergency). It’s not a true parallel system from my out of date understanding-please correct me if that’s not the case. A system based on confiscation bothers me. Some states post Katrina have enacted anti confiscation laws. Above comments are philosophical not a technical debate on my part.
It's not really confiscation. The resources belong to the carrier and they get to do with them what they want.
As for FirstNet and public safety preemption, remember that cell sites only cover a certain area, so a public safety user pulling preemption is only going to impact those inside that cell. Thats' a pretty rare case that it would kick anyone else off. Since these systems use LTE, even for voice, it means that someone might get slightly slower access to Amazon, not that they are going to get kicked off a 911 call. To me, that's a good use of preemption, but again, I agree, the optics of it can look bad to the average consumer.
mmck comment on ham repeaters being less reliable is probably true in general but a few hurricanes back a large area flooded out and all PS sites went silent. Some had tower equipment rooms flood and others just ran out of generator fuel and fuel trucks couldn’t access them because of roads under water. Those sites were engineered and built by professionals.
Professionals, yes. Lowest bidder, also.
Those sorts of instances were brought up at various IWCE/APCO conferences. Yeah, systems can fail, but there are back up resources. The issue is usually the training and making sure the end user knows how to get to those resources.
One of the issues with refueling the sites was access. The others were the trucks getting "hijacked" by other agencies to fill tanks at their sites. One of the hurricanes it came down to law enforcement escorting the fuel trucks to the site to make sure they got their and not sniped by another agency.
A few ham repeaters remained on air throughout and some local hams had a lot of excitement riding around with fire and police. Their repeaters had solar backup and their radio cabinets were mounted up on the towers rather than collocated in flooded PS radio rooms on the ground. I would bet the repeaters being up the tower had more to do with hardline cost than flood proofing.
Yeah, probably. Also, in many areas, there's a ton of ham repeaters, so one or more staying up is a possibility.
The public safety system managers learn from this stuff though.
Our agency has access not just to several VHF systems, 800 systems, but also cellular, satellite and HF. Losing the traditional LMR systems isn't the end of operations. It's the end of easy operations, and that usually takes out the guys that were not paying attention the day they covered radio use in the academy.
This is just an anecdotal story about when things don’t go according to plan. Since, flood plane sites have put in elevated platforms/buildings to place repeaters. Fuel delivery policy adjusted as well. Failure’s since have been rare and usually related to microwave backbone (Dishes knocked out of alignment). We are now prepared for the last battle but what about the next (malicious, act of terrorism, etc)? If I’m aware of some of the many weaknesses to trs then I must consider that some bad people know much more than me.
Sounds like we may be talking about the same hurricane. I'm on the west coast, so usually I hear about this at the conferences. I've got different challenges over here.
I like amateur radio and think it should be a part of every EM plan. That said, if it’s down to amateur radio to save the day then people should be fired (and the people who hired them).
Yes. Ham radio is a good resource and it can be used.
Where it usually runs afoul is when it is not coordinated and is just a bunch of random dudes with Baofengs trying to save the day. There needs to be training, training and more training (not just passing a 35 question multiple choice test). There needs to be coordination and there needs to be clearly defined roles. It's absolutely a useful tool in the toolbox. But like you said, if it gets to the point that it is the only remaining tool, there's bigger issues going on and a ham with a radio probably isn't going to be able to save that day.
We had a major telecommunications outage here about 15 years back. They deployed hams to the local hospitals. The hospitals had access to the HEARS radio system, so was easily in contact with other hospitals in the area. The ham role was for off loading the HEARS system and handling non-critical administrative traffic.
