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

Call Center/Command


Bridging the gulf between IT and RF

Bridging the gulf between IT and RF

As software becomes more important in controlling mobile radio systems and as more organizations move voice and data systems onto a common IP platform
  • Written by Urgent Communications Administrator
  • 1st February 2006

As software becomes more important in controlling mobile radio systems — and as more organizations move voice and data systems onto a common IP platform — the boundary between radio communications and information technology is turning into a highly porous membrane.

Already, many public-safety agencies have put their IT departments in charge of their mobile radio systems. If IT professionals don’t directly buy, implement and maintain radio frequency (RF) systems, often they supervise the RF professionals who do. More important, they often control those budgets. This trend poses some interesting management challenges.

One such challenge springs from the cultural divide between RF professionals and the IT specialists to whom they now report.

“Typically, where a government entity has integrated its radio systems group … into the IT group, some radio persons tell me they have a very difficult time explaining and getting [what they need] to keep up with technology and standards,” said Emery Reynolds, retired radio system manager for Arapahoe County, Colo., and now with the consulting firm BearingPoint. “Since IT does not usually understand radio systems, they’re treated as the bastard child.”

According to Bill Carter, director of wireless special programs at the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications, voice radio systems that have outlived their life expectancy are not replaced because they’re not being funded — instead, computers and related systems “seem to get higher priority” in budgeting decisions.

“As far as I see it, most IT people don’t consider the voice radio system as being a primary system,” Carter said.

Moreover, some RF professionals express indignation over operational decisions made by higher-ups with a background in IT. One — a former telecommunications manager with a major city — tells of a “data dude” who didn’t understand “that radio systems and data systems do not have common performance, maintenance or operational methodologies.” That manager “to this day is trying to remold the real-time performance needs of radio and telephone into a typical IT model, where you can keep on repeating data streams until the system gets it right,” he said.

Also, IT professional “has managed to alienate virtually every radio user — 2000-plus — because he often chooses political solutions rather than operational solutions when there are complaints.”

The melding of IT and RF organizations doesn’t always lead to rancor. “I have also seen success stories come about, where the IT [professional] has a reasonable appreciation of the radio side of the business,” BearingPoint’s Reynolds said.

He cited a successful integration in Larimer County, Colo., where the technical communications team that runs the public-safety radio system and its microwave infrastructure resides in the IT division. Dave Rowe, who leads the technical communications team, has an extensive background in both radio and IT.

“My immediate supervisor has some radio background,” Rowe said. “The guys up above are pretty much IT guys, and they really don’t understand the radio side very well.”

But upper management gives the radio group the resources it needs, he said. Rowe added that the radio group works well with the desktop computer support team and the systems administrators in charge of the computer network infrastructure in areas of common interest, such as the use of the microwave backbone to carry data circuits for the county infrastructure, he said.

Such cooperation is likely to grow as Larimer County considers plans to merge radio, data and telecommunications on an IP backbone, Rowe said. “We’d be doing voice-over-IP kinds of links out to remote sites, and it would carry radio channels, it would carry the telephone systems, some special data circuits and just the generic data for the countywide LAN.”

IT professionals in charge of radio systems also must figure out how to communicate with radio systems vendors, which may not speak a language they understand.

“Radio salespeople — those who have been in the industry for quite some time — have a real issue dealing with and understanding IT terminology and also, a lot of times, what we’re after,” said Mike Bedwell, manager of public-safety communications for the city of Aurora, Colo.

A proponent of IP-based radio systems, Bedwell recently managed the implementation of an 800 MHz radio network that rides over M/A-COM’s Enhanced Digital Access Communications System (EDACS) technology.

IT professionals in charge of radio systems want to translate radio issues into terms they understand, according to Rhett Grotzinger, vice president of sales and marketing at Trident Micro Systems, a radio infrastructure vendor. Specifically, he said, they want to know, “How do we turn this into IP packets? How do we get it onto our existing LAN? How do we best utilize our existing IT resources to facilitate wireless communications?”

That desire — and a related push for IP-based radio systems — means that radio technology vendors must “learn how to communicate with IT people in a language they are comfortable with and understand,” Grotzinger said. They also must make sure their hardware includes the connectivity options that computer networks require.

“Converting everything to a common IP platform isn’t necessarily the best, most efficient way to do things,” Grotzinger said. But “if you stand before that IT professional and say, ‘I don’t understand what you do, but let me tell you why I’ve got the best solution,’ you look like an idiot. If you can say, ‘We understand IP, we understand your network, we understand grade-of-service issues and to roll all of these packets and stick them on your network may or may not be the best thing, and here’s why,’” that will produce a useful conversation.

As one might expect, education is one of the keys to improving the working relationships between IT professionals and radio vendors.

“IT people that are going to take over radio systems need to get a good baseline understanding of how radio systems work,” Bedwell said. “There’s always been this sales approach by multiple vendors: ‘Oh, this is so technical, it’s more like magic. Unless you’re a highly trained engineer, you just can’t understand it.’ Well, that’s not the case.”

Lance Martin, a firefighter and communications director for South Sioux City, Neb., has embraced that approach. Martin is in charge of the city government’s computers and fiber-optic network. He also participates in the Siouxland Tri-State Area Radio Communications (Starcomm) project, a federally supported program that has built an interoperable public-safety radio network covering the border region of Nebraska, South Dakota and Iowa. When Martin first got involved in Starcomm, he knew little about mobile radio.

“I had to do a lot of homework to bring my understanding up to speed so I could be of value to the project,” Martin said. His best sources of information were the consultant managing the project, the Internet, colleagues with a radio background, publications on radio interoperability published by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and an e-mail information exchange maintained by the not-for-profit Public Technology Institute.

Starcomm has implemented a Motorola ASTRO P25 800 MHz trunked radio network, and the system makes use of the IP protocol. “We put in an OC-3 microwave ring throughout our tower system,” Martin said. “We’re doing public-safety radio, telephone and data all over the same backbone,” with channel banks to convert signals from analog phones to digital and back again.

With this convergence of technologies, not only did Martin need to bone up on RF, but his colleagues from the RF world had to gain an education of their own.

“There are a lot of guys on the project who don’t have an IT background or don’t have an IP background — not much knowledge of networking — that really worked me over hard with a lot of questions to get them informed on why I was wanting to do things certain ways,” he said. “You really do have to develop a whole other skill set to stay with the latest technology.”

Rowe’s radio team in Larimer County has considered bringing in a vendor to conduct an RF boot camp for colleagues on the IT side. IT professionals who take such a course “understand the concepts better and the challenges that go with RF,” he said.

The county’s RF specialists also need to learn new concepts. “We’re used to T-1 — that’s not a big deal. But frame relay and ATM and all the IP and voice-over-IP that’s coming, that’s a big change for us,” Rowe said. The county has sent RF technicians to network training provided by Motorola, he added.

The gulf between RF and IT professionals probably will shrink as older employees retire and a new generation takes over management roles, Grotzinger said. “A lot of the conflicts we see come from the ‘we’ve always done it this way’” attitude, he said.

In Aurora, Colo., the gap already has shrunk as the public-safety communications department recruits radio personnel with a strong IT background, Bedwell said. New hires who gained their radio training in the military already are IT-savvy, he said, adding that although personnel who come from the IT world may have to learn about RF on the job, “what we’ve found is that when someone has a strong skill set in information technology, learning the theory of radio and radio wave propagation is an easily trained skill set.”

Tags: Call Center/Command content Wireless Networks

Most Recent


  • AT&T becoming a “public-safety company” with FirstNet, NG911 work, exec says
    AT&T has long been one of the greatest consumer communications brands in the world, but the carrier is beginning to become “a public-safety company” through its first-responder-centric efforts in the development of FirstNet and next-generation 911 (NG911) networks, according to Scott Agnew, the new COO of AT&T’s FirstNet team. Two weeks ago, AT&T executives revealed […]
  • Command-injection bug in Cisco industrial gear opens devices to complete takeover
    A security vulnerability has been found in Cisco gear used in data centers, large enterprises, industrial factories, power plants, manufacturing centers, and smart city power grids that could allow cyberattackers unfettered access to these devices and broader networks. In a report published on Feb. 1, researchers from Trellix revealed the bug, one of two vulnerabilities discovered that […]
  • AR-based next-gen maps aim to rebalance detail and simplicity
    Every sat-nav user is familiar with the chagrin of missing their turn because the map’s lines and circles don’t resemble the real world. Yandex is blaming maps, not users, for these errors. At its annual conference in December, the company presented its re-designed maps boasting natural-looking 3D objects such as trees, bus stops, colored buildings, […]
  • Vodafone UK starts 'risky' shift to 5G standalone
    Vodafone’s Andrea Dona has unflattering words for some of the IT products that could sit inside his high-performance 5G network. “There are OSS limitations,” said the chief network officer of the UK service provider, referring to operational support systems from unnamed vendors. “If there is full automation on the 5G element, and the OSS is […]

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

  • Bridging the gulf between IT and RF
    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
  • Microsoft patches 6 zero-day vulnerabilities under active attack

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 becoming a “public-safety company” with FirstNet, NG911 work, exec says dlvr.it/Sj8FXL

9th February 2023
UrgentComm

Command-injection bug in Cisco industrial gear opens devices to complete takeover dlvr.it/Sj6X3l

8th February 2023
UrgentComm

AR-based next-gen maps aim to rebalance detail and simplicity dlvr.it/Sj4gdM

7th February 2023
UrgentComm

Vodafone UK starts ‘risky’ shift to 5G standalone dlvr.it/Sj4dPJ

7th February 2023
UrgentComm

ChatGPT may be fastest-growing app of all time, UBS Says dlvr.it/Sj4NfL

7th February 2023
UrgentComm

Public-safety coalition renews efforts to secure federal NG911 funding dlvr.it/ShwGfn

4th February 2023
UrgentComm

Newscan: Cyberattacks on DoE national labs draw lawmaker scrutiny dlvr.it/Shvpw3

3rd February 2023
UrgentComm

The shine begins to wear off 5G private wireless dlvr.it/Shth0P

3rd February 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.