https://urgentcomm.com/wp-content/themes/ucm_child/assets/images/logo/footer-new-logo.png
  • Home
  • News
  • Multimedia
    • Back
    • Multimedia
    • Video
    • Podcasts
    • Galleries
    • IWCE’s Video Showcase
    • Product Guides
  • Commentary
    • Back
    • Commentary
    • Urgent Matters
    • View From The Top
    • All Things IWCE
    • Legal Matters
  • Resources
    • Back
    • Resources
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
    • Reprints & Reuse
  • IWCE
    • Back
    • IWCE
    • Conference
    • Special Events
    • Exhibitor Listings
    • Premier Partners
    • Floor Plan
    • Exhibiting Information
    • Register for IWCE
  • About Us
    • Back
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise
    • Terms of Service
    • Privacy Statement
    • Cookie Policy
  • Related Sites
    • Back
    • American City & County
    • IWCE
    • Light Reading
    • IOT World Today
    • Mission Critical Technologies
    • TU-Auto
  • In the field
    • Back
    • In the field
    • Broadband Push-to-X
    • Internet of Things
    • Project 25
    • Public-Safety Broadband/FirstNet
    • Virtual/Augmented Reality
    • Land Mobile Radio
    • Long Term Evolution (LTE)
    • Applications
    • Drones/Robots
    • IoT/Smart X
    • Software
    • Subscriber Devices
    • Video
  • Call Center/Command
    • Back
    • Call Center/Command
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • NG911
    • Alerting Systems
    • Analytics
    • Dispatch/Call-taking
    • Incident Command/Situational Awareness
    • Tracking, Monitoring & Control
  • Network Tech
    • Back
    • Network Tech
    • Interoperability
    • LMR 100
    • LMR 200
    • Backhaul
    • Deployables
    • Power
    • Tower & Site
    • Wireless Networks
    • Coverage/Interference
    • Security
    • System Design
    • System Installation
    • System Operation
    • Test & Measurement
  • Operations
    • Back
    • Operations
    • Critical Infrastructure
    • Enterprise
    • Federal Government/Military
    • Public Safety
    • State & Local Government
    • Training
  • Regulations
    • Back
    • Regulations
    • Narrowbanding
    • T-Band
    • Rebanding
    • TV White Spaces
    • None
    • Funding
    • Policy
    • Regional Coordination
    • Standards
  • Organizations
    • Back
    • Organizations
    • AASHTO
    • APCO
    • DHS
    • DMR Association
    • ETA
    • EWA
    • FCC
    • IWCE
    • NASEMSO
    • NATE
    • NXDN Forum
    • NENA
    • NIST/PSCR
    • NPSTC
    • NTIA/FirstNet
    • P25 TIG
    • TETRA + CCA
    • UTC
Urgent Communications
  • NEWSLETTER
  • Home
  • News
  • Multimedia
    • Back
    • Video
    • Podcasts
    • Omdia Crit Comms Circle Podcast
    • Galleries
    • IWCE’s Video Showcase
    • Product Guides
  • Commentary
    • Back
    • All Things IWCE
    • Urgent Matters
    • View From The Top
    • Legal Matters
  • Resources
    • Back
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
    • Reprints & Reuse
    • UC eZines
    • Sponsored content
  • IWCE
    • Back
    • Conference
    • Why Attend
    • Exhibitor Listing
    • Floor Plan
    • Exhibiting Information
    • Join the Event Mailing List
  • About Us
    • Back
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise
    • Cookie Policy
    • Terms of Service
    • Privacy Statement
  • Related Sites
    • Back
    • American City & County
    • IWCE
    • Light Reading
    • IOT World Today
    • TU-Auto
  • newsletter
  • In the field
    • Back
    • Internet of Things
    • Broadband Push-to-X
    • Project 25
    • Public-Safety Broadband/FirstNet
    • Virtual/Augmented Reality
    • Land Mobile Radio
    • Long Term Evolution (LTE)
    • Applications
    • Drones/Robots
    • IoT/Smart X
    • Software
    • Subscriber Devices
    • Video
  • Call Center/Command
    • Back
    • Artificial Intelligence
    • NG911
    • Alerting Systems
    • Analytics
    • Dispatch/Call-taking
    • Incident Command/Situational Awareness
    • Tracking, Monitoring & Control
  • Network Tech
    • Back
    • Cybersecurity
    • Interoperability
    • LMR 100
    • LMR 200
    • Backhaul
    • Deployables
    • Power
    • Tower & Site
    • Wireless Networks
    • Coverage/Interference
    • Security
    • System Design
    • System Installation
    • System Operation
    • Test & Measurement
  • Operations
    • Back
    • Critical Infrastructure
    • Enterprise
    • Federal Government/Military
    • Public Safety
    • State & Local Government
    • Training
  • Regulations
    • Back
    • Narrowbanding
    • T-Band
    • Rebanding
    • TV White Spaces
    • None
    • Funding
    • Policy
    • Regional Coordination
    • Standards
  • Organizations
    • Back
    • AASHTO
    • APCO
    • DHS
    • DMR Association
    • ETA
    • EWA
    • FCC
    • IWCE
    • NASEMSO
    • NATE
    • NXDN Forum
    • NENA
    • NIST/PSCR
    • NPSTC
    • NTIA/FirstNet
    • P25 TIG
    • TETRA + CCA
    • UTC
acc.com

content


Interoperability plan now a royal mess

Interoperability plan now a royal mess

In an ideal world, police, fire, and EMS agencies all would use the same radio system and operate on the same frequencies. By doing so, they could talk
  • Written by Urgent Communications Administrator
  • 1st January 2006

In an ideal world, police, fire, and EMS agencies all would use the same radio system and operate on the same frequencies. By doing so, they could talk to each other at all times, regardless of circumstance.

In the late 1990s, police, fire, EMS, and transit agencies serving Victoria, B.C., and environs decided to make this interoperability dream a reality. To do so, 39 of them founded a corporation called Capital Region Emergency Service Telecommunications (CREST). The agency-owned-and-controlled corporation’s job was to implement and manage a single public-safety communications system to serve about 2000 portable and mobile radios. To accomplish its task, CREST’s members selected Motorola to provide trunked VHF SmartZone 4.1 radios and infrastructure to cover the 927 square miles of seashore, mountains and urban high-rises that fell within CREST’s footprint, at a cost of $18.5 million CDN.

Fast forward to today: CREST has been on-air for about two years, and many of its users are very, very unhappy with the region’s VHF radio system.

“It is hard to predict where it will work and where it won’t work,” said Doug Angrove, deputy chief of the City of Victoria Fire Department (VFD). Small wonder: According to the recent “Independent Review of Operations” report commissioned by CREST and prepared by Vancouver-based Planetworks Consulting, “system coverage is significantly deficient in certain areas, including downtown Victoria.” The report further stated that in-building coverage is of “particular concern … mainly in areas of high building density.”

In order to stay in touch, VFD incident commanders typically direct their firefighters to use simplex radio communications inside buildings so that they can be heard outside. Unfortunately, dispatchers can’t hear these officers in simplex mode, which is why incident commanders end up using two portable radios. One portable operates in simplex mode for talking to their crew, and the other works in trunked mode for connecting back to dispatch.

“My users are telling me that the previous system had limitations, but they feel that the previous system was better than what we currently have,” Angrove said. “Basically, I need a system that is reliable and dependable; a system that will penetrate most buildings, and also a system that my dispatch can monitor.”

Angrove isn’t alone in his complaints. Officers from the Victoria Police Department (VPD) also have gone public with their criticisms of the CREST system on the CTV television network and its Web site (www.ctv.ca).

“When it works, it works fine,” VPD Sgt. Glenn Vermette told CTV News. “However Murphy’s Law would always have it that when you need it the most, it’s not there.”

“We’ve had a couple of close calls; we’ve had situations where we’ve lost communication with incident command, and I would call them close calls,” said Rick Farrell, Victoria Fire Fighters Union president, according to a CTV news story. “Is it a matter of time [until someone gets hurt]? Yeah, probably.”

CREST’s coverage gaps may explain the network’s alleged denial-of-service (DOS) issues. The report said that users consistently mentioned being “bonked” — denied access, as signified by a “bonk” tone — by the system as a result of poor coverage. However, poor coverage may not be the only cause for the DOS problems. Other reasons cited by the report — available online at www.crest.bc.ca — include a lack of available channels, busy talk groups, radios roaming between sites and units not completely powered up and thus unable to communicate.

Whatever the causes, CREST hasn’t proved to be a radio interoperability dream. In fact, in those “close calls” alluded to by Farrell, CREST’s system has been nothing short of a nightmare.

The report offered 21 recommendations that, if implemented, would give the CREST system a real chance of fulfilling its potential. The catch is that implementing the recommendations would require substantial new money and cooperation from CREST’s member agencies. “They have to take another pass at restructuring the governance and the financing model of CREST,” said Mike Webb, a Planetworks Consulting associate.

This won’t be easy to achieve, Webb said. “I think early on there were a lot of promises made and a lot of unrealistic commitments in order to achieve 100-percent participation,” he said. “One of the most unrealistic expectations [on behalf of the member agencies was] that ‘this would not cost us anything.’”

The system’s design apparently is among the unrealistic expectations because the original CREST network concept is nothing like the network that actually got built. According to Ron Cullis, general manager, CREST originally asked Motorola to build a VHF/UHF hybrid radio system, with the UHF to be used “for the core municipalities.” However, in order to bring other entities such as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police into the system, “there was a need to turn the system into a wideband VHF system … [plus] there was not sufficient [800 MHz] UHF spectrum available,” Cullis said.

The result was that CREST ended up as a VHF-only system, even though UHF had been advocated for urban radio coverage. To make matters worse, federal radio regulations forced the VHF system to operate in narrowband rather than wideband mode; this resulted in poorer signal propagation and diminished in-building penetration.

Another problem, according to the report, is that the radio system specifications to which CREST and Motorola agreed “did not incorporate any requirement for the provision or assessment of in-building coverage.” Compounding matters is that “no testing for building penetration margin was conducted,” the report said.

CREST has tried to address the alleged problems, including the deployment of terrestrial uplinks in downtown Victoria to bridge coverage gaps. However, Angrove said uplinks only could do so much.

For instance, a hotel is located at the edge of one uplink. For firefighters, this means that by standing in certain locations, their portable radios can communicate directly to dispatch. But should they move “ten steps either way in either direction,” the direct connection can be lost, Angrove said.

The infrastructure problems are just one part of the story. Given that CREST serves some 2000 radio users, has eight VHF trunked multicast sites and covers a 927-square-mile area, one would expect it to have a reasonably sized staff. But it doesn’t, according to Webb. “CREST … is basically Ron [Cullis], who’s a part-time general manager and a full-time operations manager, and that’s about it,” he said.

While the agency does have substantial support agreements in place with Motorola, “you need bodies of your own” to bridge the gap between vendors and users,” Webb said.

According to Cullis, CREST was assembled from officers drawn from member agencies, who built the system while still keeping their regular jobs. When the system was up and running, “those individuals went back to their previous work,” Cullis said.

To remedy this problem, Planetworks recommended bringing CREST’s roster up to five employees. In doing so, CREST could take over some of the work it currently outsources to Motorola at a cost of about $500,000 CDN annually. Even when the cost of the additional staff is factored into the equation, this move could save CREST about $125,000 CDN annually, Webb said.

But such a move might not be feasible given CREST’s financial structure. The agency’s annual budget is based on two sources: A $1.5 million CDN service fee paid by the municipalities in the Capital Regional District (CRD), and a $350 CDN per-radio annual charge to its members, which generated nearly $600,000 CDN in 2004.

However, given the money borrowed to build the CREST system, the service and membership fees are “well below” the levels required to meet operating expenditures and debt obligations on an ongoing basis, the Planetworks report said. “This deficit will occur even if CREST does not materially increase its operating expenses or capital expenditures to deal with … [its] operational challenges,” the report stated.

Simply put, CREST doesn’t receive enough money to keep operating at its current level, let alone make the recommended improvements. To remedy this, Planetworks further recommended changing CREST’s funding model so that the amount each member pays is proportional to the size of its geographic coverage area, the number of radios it has, its population base and its overall system usage. But given British Columbia’s current tight government finances, selling CREST’s member agencies on these recommendations likely won’t be easy.

CREST’s rise and fall

Late 1990s

Thirty-nine municipalities in and around Victoria, B.C., establish CREST. Its goal: to create a seamless, common VHF radio system.

2003

CREST goes live.

2005

Following numerous complaints, Planetworks is hired by CREST to troubleshoot the network. Planetworks finds CREST to be underfunded, underequipped and undermanned.

Tags: content Policy

Most Recent


  • Federal agencies infested by cyberattackers via legit remote-management systems
    It has come to light that hackers cleverly utilized two off-the-shelf remote monitoring and management systems (RMMs) to breach multiple Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agency networks in the US last summer. On Jan. 25, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), National Security Agency (NSA), and Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) released […]
  • How 5G is making cities safer, smarter, and more efficient
    It’s a scenario we’ve all experienced: an ambulance with a blaring siren racing against time to get a person in medical distress to a hospital through traffic. What we don’t see is 5G connectivity enabling paramedics to communicate with hospital staff via video conference and coordinate care in real-time before arriving at the emergency room. […]
  • MCPTT interworking for critical communications
    The goal of mission-critical communication systems is to minimize the response time of first responders in emergency situations across several agencies. A dedicated push-to-talk button offers an efficient mechanism that simplifies the speaker-to-listener process to a minimum. This feature is useful when coordinating large group activities and to enable the instant flow of tactical status […]
  • Self-driving cars present terrorism risk, FBI director says
    The rollout of self-driving cars could mean an increased threat of terrorist attacks. That was the alarming warning delivered during a discussion on national security at the World Economic Forum at Davos in Switzerland. While the safety benefits of autonomous vehicles (AVs) have long been touted, the need for caution was highlighted by Federal Bureau […]

Leave a comment Cancel reply

To leave a comment login with your Urgent Comms account:

Log in with your Urgent Comms account

Or alternatively provide your name, email address below:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Content

  • New Orleans-area 911 center inks multiyear APEX deal with Carbyne to replace call-handling system
  • Interoperability plan now a royal mess
    Newscan: Feds recover millions from pipeline ransom hackers, hint at U.S. Internet tactic
  • Cyber is the new Cold War, and AI is the arms race
  • Private wireless networks in the US start going public

Commentary


How 5G is making cities safer, smarter, and more efficient

26th January 2023

3GPP moves Release 18 freeze date to March 2024

18th January 2023

Do smart cities make safer cities?

  • 1
6th January 2023
view all

Events


UC Ezines


IWCE 2019 Wrap Up

13th May 2019
view all

Twitter


UrgentComm

AT&T FirstNet unleashes robotic dogs for emergency services dlvr.it/ShW7p8

27th January 2023
UrgentComm

Federal agencies infested by cyberattackers via legit remote-management systems dlvr.it/ShVhn3

26th January 2023
UrgentComm

How 5G is making cities safer, smarter, and more efficient dlvr.it/ShVS1h

26th January 2023
UrgentComm

MCPTT interworking for critical communications dlvr.it/ShTm3P

26th January 2023
UrgentComm

Self-driving cars present terrorism risk, FBI director says dlvr.it/ShTTHx

26th January 2023
UrgentComm

UK Home Office officially will cut ESN ties with Motorola Solutions in December dlvr.it/ShNjfN

24th January 2023
UrgentComm

Newscan: Police software vendor breach exposes personal data, raid plans dlvr.it/ShN0q2

24th January 2023
UrgentComm

RT @IWCEexpo: We're so excited about our awesome list of speakers! Today we highlight Budge Currier, a 9-1-1 Branch Manager at CAL OES, res…

24th January 2023

Newsletter

Sign up for UrgentComm’s newsletters to receive regular news and information updates about Communications and Technology.

Expert Commentary

Learn from experts about the latest technology in automation, machine-learning, big data and cybersecurity.

Business Media

Find the latest videos and media from the market leaders.

Media Kit and Advertising

Want to reach our digital and print audiences? Learn more here.

DISCOVER MORE FROM INFORMA TECH

  • American City & County
  • IWCE
  • Light Reading
  • IOT World Today
  • Mission Critical Technologies
  • TU-Auto

WORKING WITH US

  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Events
  • Careers

FOLLOW Urgent Comms ON SOCIAL

  • Privacy
  • CCPA: “Do Not Sell My Data”
  • Cookie Policy
  • Terms
Copyright © 2023 Informa PLC. Informa PLC is registered in England and Wales with company number 8860726 whose registered and Head office is 5 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1WG.