Multiband promise becomes a reality

Aug 5, 2008 11:58 AM, By Donny Jackson

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KANSAS CITY--One of the longtime problems in public-safety communications has been the fact that the frequencies used by first-responder agencies are dispersed throughout the spectrum chart. In the name of interoperability, multiple vendors have designed myriad network-based solutions that allow patching between systems operating in different bands, but there’s always a fundamental caveat: patching doesn’t work if there’s no coverage in the band in which your radio is designed to work.

As a result, public safety has become accustomed to stories of 800 MHz radios being useless when big-city personnel are dispatched to an incident in a rural area, where radio coverage likely is provided in the VHF or UHF bands, forcing the need for radio swaps or more creative solutions.

But such scenarios might not exist much longer, as multiband radios will be available from several manufacturers in 2009, providing public-safety agencies with options that have been discussed at trade shows such as this week’s Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) in Kansas City.
The difference between this APCO show and previous industry trade shows is that agencies can now contrast and compare multiband portable radios from multiple vendors.

The trend started earlier this year at the IWCE conference in March, when Thales Communications announced its Liberty radio. The Liberty, a key component in a DHS pilot, can operate in the UHF, VHF and 700/800 bands, and was public-safety-ready in March. Since then, Thales has tweaked the prototype shown at IWCE—adding, among other things, a color display—and plans to make the Liberty radio generally available early in 2009, said Steve Nichols, Thales’ director of business development for DHS/public safety.

Another multiband radio showcased at IWCE came from Harris, which displayed a multiband offering targeted to federal agencies. While impressed with the technology, several public-safety officials at the show expressed concern that Harris would not be able to make the radio for public safety, which needs gear with greater interference-mitigation characteristics. Apparently, such concerns were unfounded, as Harris this week has unveiled a public-safety version of its multiband radio.