New York State should ditch a $2 billion plan for a statewide wireless network for emergency workers, unless the already delayed system can be fixed, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said on Thursday.
“After three rounds of failed testing, it is apparent that this system is not ready to move forward. M/A-COM has not met its contractual obligations and New York can’t afford to spend $2 billion on a system that doesn’t work right,” he said. “M/A-COM has to deliver what it promised,” DiNapoli added.
The state-wide network would enable emergency first responders, such as police and firefighters, to talk to each other. It would use Project 25 radios, an interoperable, 2-way radio standard that allows different voice users to communicate. It also enables slow (9.6 Kbps), data transmission.
The New York State Office for Technology (OFT) is expected to decide whether to accept or reject the first phase of the network build-out in two counties by August 29th. Melodie Mayberry-Stewart (right), has taken over as the director of the Office of Technology and said that the Aug. 29 deadline, for thumbs up or down on the contract, is firm.
M/A-COM doesn’t get a dime if it’s thumbs down. Plus, a $50 million letter of credit filed by M/A-COM with the state may be tapped for what the state has spent already in anticipation.
When the administration of Gov. George E. Pataki awarded the contract in 2005, some lawmakers questioned whether the company was the best choice. M/A-COM was represented by former Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato, a close ally of the governor. Some of those lawmakers thought that Motorola’s proposal would have been a better choice. A spokesman for Motorola said on Thursday that the company had completed or was working on similar systems in 28 states.
New York’s statewide wireless emergency communications system would not include any construction in the protected wilderness areas of the Adirondacks and Catskills. Tyco International subsidiary, M/A-Com, bid roughly $1 billion for the 20-year contract. They planned to use as few as four towers in the Adirondacks and the Catskills, and none in protected areas.
That was sharply fewer than the bid from Motorola which proposed 400 towers for the project. Motorola’s bid was roughly $3 billion. New York officials said the different approach to building new towers was the major reason for the vast difference in the bids.
In the Tyco proposal, repeaters are an essential element in avoiding the construction of towers. Repeaters are used throughout the country as a standard way of giving greater amplification to the transmissions of hand-held radios.
While VHF radios (at 150 and 450 MHz) cover rugged, thickly forested terrain better, 700 and 800 MHz radios are better in densely populated areas. P-25 radios — with IP-based interoperability — could unite the force. Tyco Electronics’ M/A-COM business won the contract in 2005, the biggest New York technology contract ever awarded.
The statewide network was expected to be completed and fully operational by July 2010. M/A-COM said in March it successfully completed coverage testing in the two New York counties that comprise the first region of the network to be built.
But recent testing, carried out by the state, has left some officials skeptical. The system is a year and a half behind schedule and has suffered from technology problems, according to Jennifer Freeman a spokeswoman for the comptroller. “It’s very likely this contract is not going to go ahead unless the issues are fixed,” said Freeman. The state will spend $60 million less on the project over the next two years, as the result of a special legislative session that ended this week.
Tyco Electronics said in a statement e-mailed to Reuters that the audit “includes a number of inaccuracies” and said it would “correct any remaining outstanding issues related to the first phase of this program.”
In rural Chautauqua, it worked. But in populated Erie County, with tall buildings and crammed cellphone towers, there were numerous gaps in coverage and the system was deemed not successful. In May, more tests found roughly the same problems, only fewer of them.
Officials from M/A-Com expressed confidence the issues could be addressed, and said problems in Buffalo had been caused by interference from other radio transmissions. The system has been tested in neighboring Chatauqua County, which is mainly rural, and officials there had no complaints, said Victoria Dillon, an M/A-Com spokeswoman.
The gaps were “localized in a few sites, like cell carriers, a TV station in Canada,” Ms. Dillon said. Michael R. Mittleman, the state official overseeing the project for the Office of Technology, agreed.
Comptroller DiNapoli advised New York should go back to the drawing board unless M/A-COM can fix problems.
If M/A-COM fails the final evaluation in Erie and Chautauqua counties, it is uncertain what direction the state could take next. It could seek to still improve the M/A-COM solution, rebid the project that could add further delays or just scrap the whole idea of a statewide wireless network.
A similar mandate for federal police agencies called the Integrated Wireless Network (IWN) was begun with a pilot project, called the Seattle/Blaine Pilot Project, initiated in the Seattle region. It became fully operational in December 2004 and provided a trunked, interoperable wireless radio network for over 600 federal users from 5 federal agencies.
But the U.S. Department of Justice said the program was at high risk of failing (pdf) due to: (1) uncertain funding for the project; (2) disparate departmental funding mechanisms that allow the departments to pursue separate wireless communications solutions apart from IWN; (3) the fractured nature of the IWN partnership; and (4) the lack of an effective governing structure for the project.
The Oregon Telecommunications Coordinating Council (ORTCC) got together with the Oregon State Interoperability Executive Council — as many states have done — to develop a similar $500 million state-wide public service network (which later grew closer to $650 million) called the Oregon Wireless Interoperability Network (OWIN).
It would be a voice-oriented network, used exclusively by first responders (revised design). Federal Engineering, which is advising the New York Network, was awarded Oregon’s contract to create a presentation (Real Video) and review the scope, goals and costs of the Oregon Wireless Interoperability Network project. This week FE got another contract with the State of Oregon to develop an RFP for procuring the state-wide radio systems and infrastructure.
But an assumption of “free” matching funds from the feds may be presumptuous and the choice of vendors often comes down to the two dominant Project 25 providers; Motorola and M/A-Com. A two-slot TDMA doubles system capacity and meets the FCC’s requirement for 6.25 kHz channel equivalency by creating two voice paths within a 12.5 kHz channel with a half rate vocoder.
Finding the money to build a state-wide, interoperable (and narrow-band) radio network exclusively for first responders, is a problem for virtually every state. The state-wide infrastructure can cost billions, while thousands of Project 25, 2-way voice radios, costing $3,500 each, can run hundreds of millions more — billions in the case of New York. Where is the money coming from?
Nobody seems to know.
Today, the federal IWN project seems mired in bureaucratic and policy pettiness. The $10 billion federal network involving digital Land Mobile Radio (LMR) services and the P-25 suite of standards tying local, state and federal public safety organizations and agencies together seems increasingly irrelevant, obsolete and unworkable.
Emergency managers like to point out “lives are at sake”. But dual-use handsets that can access satellite services when cellular or police radio towers go out would have saved lives during Hurricane Katrina.
TerreStar’s tiny sat phone (left) is the size of a Blackberry and roams on AT&T’s cellular network. It features Quad-band GSM, satphone connections, GPS, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. It will be available to North American customers in mid-2009. Spot beam satellites from Inmarsat and ICO will soon be joined by Terrestar and MSV for roaming between terrestrial repeaters.
Satphones, cellular and WiMAX can help — here and now — not 10 years and $10B in the future.
Some believe the solution lies in the nationwide, broadband 700 Mhz channels, which the FCC unsuccessfully tried to auction recently. That would provide 20 Mhz of broadband spectrum that could be shared by both public service agencies and ordinary mortals. In the FCC’s plan, the winning bidder would build a nationwide network at no cost to state or federal governments.
The FCC will likely try auctioning the 700 public service frequencies again next year. Meanwhile, Motorola is stalking the halls of state legislatures.
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