Light Reading says the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says that it has made “significant advances” in making emergency service radios interoperable via the Safecom program. But interoperability requires “a long term, continuing investment and cannot be solved by a one time, band-aid allocation of resources.”
Better radio interoperability — enabling police, fire and other emergency wireless systems to be “talk” together at a moment’s notice — was one of the principal recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.
“Congress should support pending legislation [The HERO Act] which provides for the expedited and increased assignment of radio spectrum for public safety purposes,” The 9-11 Commission said in its final report in the summer of 2004.
The Homeland Emergency Response Operations Act (H.R. 1425) calls for Congress set a deadline of Dec. 31, 2006, for the FCC to provide public safety agencies sole access to spectrum currently used for TV broadcasts.
DHS, however, says that spectrum is not the whole answer to the question of interoperability. The department has established a program called the Safecom Interoperability Continuum that has identified five major factors needed to ensure radio interoperability: Governance, standard operating procedures, technology, training and exercises, and usage.
“All of these factors must be met to achieve interoperability,” says Christopher Kelly, a spokesperson for the DHS. According to Kelly, so far, over $2 billion of federal money has been used for interoperable communications programs.
During the 2004 financial year, Safecom led RapidCom 1, an effort to ensure that the top 10 high-threat urban areas — Boston, Chicago, Houston, Jersey City, Los Angeles, Miami, the National Capital Region, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco — are able to establish communications at the command level within one hour of a major event.
Safecom and DHS’s Office of Grants and Training have now launched RapidCom 2 to speed-up the development of a Tactical Interoperability Communication Plans (TICP) in 75 high-threat regions, including past and present Urban Area Security Initiative regions. At the end of RapidCom 2, each region will have an approved TICP and will hold an exercise to test the plan.
Meanwhile, Verizon Wireless and Cyren Call Communications are both calling on the FCC to let them use 700MHz TV spectrum to build public safety networks.
Verizon and Cyren Call want national broadband networks in the 700 MHz band based on a public-private partnership model. But the majority of mission critical voice operations remain on privately owned public safety land mobile radio systems, such as 800 MHz, explains DHS. Interoperability and operability are still a challenge for these systems, according to DHS.
Many police officers are now equipped with Nextel cellphones as well as police radios. That gives them interoperability. Project 25 two-way radios ($2500) are designed for interoperability from the get-go – at least on a few dozen selected narrow band channels. The 800 Mhz band also has some selected mutual aid channels so different agencies can talk to each other.
The SafetyNet RadioBridge is one method to interconnect incompatible radios. It bridges them to provide radio interoperability at an emergency site in a matter of minutes. Raytheon’s ACU-1000 can interconnect up to 24 radio devices in the field – for a cool $20K.
The FCC has designated approximately 10 percent (2.6 MHz) for nationwide interoperable communications out of their designated 24 Mhz of 700 MHz public safety spectrum. But most of the 24 MHz of public servce 700 Mhz band is for narrow band voice and data.
There are five primary bands that make up the Public Safety Radio Pool:
Low-Band VHF 30 MHz to 50 MHz Mid-Band VHF 72 MHz to 76 MHz High-Band VHF 138 MHz to 144 MHz 148 MHz to 174 MHz 220 MHz to 222 MHz Low-Band UHF 406.1 MHz to 420 MHz 450 MHz to 470 MHz 470 MHz to 512 MHz 800 MHz Band 806 MHz to 824 MHz 851 MHz to 869 MHz
Related DailyWireless articles include; New 700MHz Rules?, Statewide Interoperabilty Plan, InterOp Takes a Holiday, Public Safety Mesh, Homeland Security Gets Truckin’, Emergency Communications SimDay, Coast Guard’s Vessel Monitoring, Border Surveillence, Event Blogging with WiFi/VoIP, How To Spend Your Homeland Security Check, InterOp Takes a Holiday, Hurricane/Tsuanmi Satellite Access, Ring of Fire Earthquake, Mobile Satellite Access, Unwired Transportation, What About the Radios? and State-wide Interoperability Plan.
