How I spent my spring break
Public safety doesn’t need to worry so much about radio and communications interoperability; it needs to worry more about workforce interoperability.
I always perform a balancing act when attending a radio industry trade show. It isn’t as sophisticated as a “delicate balance” — it’s more like dancing elephants. A case in point was the International Wireless Communications Expo this year. On one hand, a nearly endless collection of interesting exhibits and vendors with technical staffers were present to answer technical questions and to provide factory insight. On the other hand, there was a plethora of pertinent (if not interesting) seminars and presentation sessions.
For readers who were unable to attend IWCE this year, there was also IWCE Live! (link to the site through www.mrtmag.com) on the Internet, which provided timely updates and insights from the show floor. This year’s show also saw several private firms hosting detailed “infomercial” sessions covering the technical intricacies of their respective products and services.
The problem was that all this concentrated brilliance was floating around at the same time, and my brain filled up pretty fast. I did learn three new trade show phrases, at least one of which could be routinely worked into normal conversation. First was “booth babes” for the lovely women hired to draw in attendees. Second was “apps” for appetizers, as served in hospitality suites. Third was “bladder buster” for the 32-oz. drinks often sold in convenience stores.
I also talked to everyone who would listen about the future of the industry in general, prospects for paging, cellular and land mobile (now called dispatch, courtesy of Nextel) in particular, and insight about the future of public-safety systems.
Kathleen Wallman, keynote speaker at the show’s opening session, discussed future challenges and provided several “good” examples of service provision. Tom Tolman narrated a session discussing interoperability. Another session with Wallman and Tolman covered 700MHz systems.
Several APCO officials were at the show, and there was an afternoon-long presentation about TETRA, the European-led consortium standard for Terrestrial Trunked Radio. So, based on what I heard, saw and discussed, I’m hereby offering my first post-show opinion register. (This isn’t a report or a synopsis — it’s only my opinion, of which I have several.)
First, there continues to be a steady push for blanket public-safety migration to the 700MHz band. It appears that there is also a concurrent push for a government-driven technical standard for operation in this band. My opinion is that “irrational exuberance” for either of these ventures will yield a proprietary, disproportionately expensive technical solution for any migrating public safety agency. Generally, local public safety doesn’t have the price of admission to this unnecessarily expensive “technology buffet.”
Second, public-safety needs must and will embrace integrated computer applications involving mobile data. The importance of data will grow, and the prevalence of voice radio will shrink.
Third, public safety doesn’t need to worry so much about radio and communications interoperability; public safety needs to worry more about workforce interoperability. The fire service is already attuned to this concept with Unified Command and the Incident Command System, which allows complete scalability of incident management. Police are less adept at this concept but only because we are taught to think and act predicated on an individual response. Public-works departments are critical to an incident response and, for the most part, have been too busy working and doing their daily jobs to focus on ICS.
Fourth, public safety will need to begin doing what surviving businesses do: develop liaisons and new business partnerships. For example, if Nextel were to provide a software-partitioned, public-safety “sub-net”, and if the price were reasonable, then public safety might have a new, different and valuable wireless tool.
Dunford, MRT’s public safety consultant, is technical services consultant for the Lenexa, KS, police department. He is a member of the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials-International. You can email Dunford at [email protected].
