In their own words
Public-safety communications officials’ perceptions of the current state of their voice and data networks — and their future hopes for those networks — depends largely on where they are located and what they have to spend. While some are eager to pursue next-generation technologies, others are just happy to have radios that are reliable — or to have radios at all. There is one issue that touches virtually all of them, however: Spectrum management, particularly the FCC’s narrowbanding mandate, presents plenty of technological and procedural challenges.
COVERAGE IS THE BIGGEST GROWING PAIN
BY TOM SORLEY
NAME: TOM SORLEY
TITLE: MANAGER FOR PUBLIC-SAFETY COMMUNICATIONS
ORGANIZATION: ORANGE COUNTY (FLA.) BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
NETWORK USERS: 20,000
POPULATION SERVED BY NETWORK: 1 MILLION (PLUS 40 MILLION TOURISTS ANNUALLY)
EMPLOYEES MAINTAINING NETWORK: 10
ANNUAL OPERATING BUDGET: $2.4 MILLION
A Motorola SmartZone 800 MHz, nine-site, 22-channel system is supplemented by partnerships with the city of Orlando — which has a five-site, 22-channel simulcast system — and the cities of Winter Park and Maitland, which have five- and four-site systems, respectively. Each of the three systems is a node on the county’s system, an arrangement that allows seamless roaming. This wide-area traffic accounts for about 30% of the total radio traffic on the county’s system.
Most of our problems are with coverage, not throughput. We’re a rapidly growing community; when we first designed the system, we had cow pastures and orange groves on the outer edge — now we have Super Wal-Marts and thousand-home developments that we can’t talk in because we don’t have enough towers. The frequency reuse rules are so strict so everyone can get a little piece of the limited spectrum we have. We’re looking for 700 MHz to alleviate some of the spectrum issues.
We’re also limited on what we can do regarding power. The frequencies have to be reused 30 miles away, so we can’t use enough power to get in-building coverage at our borders. We have some in-building amplification systems, but because we’re a fast-growing community, we don’t have politicians eager to force these developers to do things like this. There are places with laws that require these things, but I don’t know whether we’ll ever see one. It’s a difficult political path.
Technology is going to rapidly change. We’re going to see software-defined radio (SDR) devices. I envision a multiprotocol device that uses one base station to do voice, data and everything else I need to push through it. SDR is an enabling technology for where we want to go.
We’re also deploying satellite phones more and more, and we’re looking at satellite for backhaul purposes. I spend a lot of money on microwave networks, and satellite could be used at least as a backup. Satellite isn’t the sole answer, but it is a tool in the toolkit that I think we could start using more.
But we’re not as interested, at least right now, in IP-based technologies. Everyone says we’re going to need to migrate to IP in order to take advantage of the newest technology. But today’s systems are proprietary, and it’s very difficult to go before commissioners with sole-source provisioning — they want competitive procurement. So we’re going to maintain for the moment, with the idea of doing system replacement in 2011. We’ll hire a consultant to help us do that. I think technology is going to change dramatically in the next five years, and we’re not going to be looking at traditional voice systems.
— AS TOLD TO GLENN BISCHOFF
MORE CAPACITY IS NEEDED
BY JON WISWELL
NAME: JON (WIZ) WISWELL
TITLE: RADIO NETWORK MANAGER
ORGANIZATION: CITY OF SEATTLE (ONE OF FOUR OWNERS OF THE NETWORK)
NUMBER USERS: 15,000
POPULATION SERVED BY NETWORK: 1.8 MILLION
EMPLOYEES MAINTAINING NETWORK: 15 PLUS CONTRACT VENDORS
ANNUAL OPERATING BUDGET: $300,000
Started in 1993 and substantially completed in the late 1990s, the Motorola 800 MHz SmartZone system in the King County Regional Communications System serves four users: the city of Seattle, King County, Valley Communications Center (Valley Com) and the Eastside Public Safety Communications Agency (EPSCA).
What we’ve got today has been extremely stable, very reliable and we’re very pleased with that.
What we would like is more capacity — we’ve maxed out our central audio switch, but there’s not more capacity being made. We’d like more 800 MHz frequencies, but there are none to be had in the Seattle-Puget Sound region.
Our problem with spectrum is that a lot of it is secondary to Canada. We only have half the NPSPAC spectrum available to us because the other half is secondary to Canada. Given the topology out here, we have to very carefully choose where we put those frequencies.
This is also an issue with rebanding. As we move these frequencies, where do they move? Do we have to move frequencies around to make sure the Canadian border is protected after rebanding? So there’s a whole lot of engineering that has to go on before we can ever start to do any rebanding.
We’re in Wave 4. At one time, we were thinking about taking the amount of money it would cost to reband and put it toward a 700 MHz system, but there was no way we could put it together — the timeframes for rebanding are too tight.
We are now at the 4.1 version of SmartZone, and 4.1 is coming to the end of its life. Probably in the next five to seven years, we will need to replace it. We are just now starting to look at how we’re going to do that and what we’re going to do.
Most of the radios today on our system are legacy radios; they are not 700/800 MHz compatible. With 14,000 to 15,000 radios on the system, we’d probably have to replace as many as 12,000 of them. So there are huge issues with that — what would seem on the surface to be an easy fix is not an easy fix. And if we went to 700 MHz, that would require a redesign, new equipment and a new system, quite frankly.
The problem with starting to look [at technologies] five or six years ahead of when you want to do something is that there can be major technological changes along the way, and whatever you install is obsolete. Of course, if you always wait for the latest and greatest, you’ll never get anything, so there’s a balancing act.
We want to be on the leading edge, but we don’t want to be on the bleeding edge — because it has to work.
— AS TOLD TO DONNY JACKSON
INTEROPERABILITY IS EASIER THAN IT LOOKS
BY DARRYL ANDERSON
NAME: DARRYL ANDERSON
TITLE: DIRECTOR
ORGANIZATION: OHIO MARCS (MULTI-AGENCY RADIO COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM)
NETWORK USERS: 19,600
POPULATION SERVED BY NETWORK: 11.5 MILLION
EMPLOYEES MAINTAINING NETWORK: 18
ANNUAL OPERATING BUDGET: $11 MILLION
The agency’s Motorola 800 MHz digital trunked system uses — and reuses — 171 frequency pairs throughout the state that support 203 towers — of these, 141 support voice communications, while all support data transmissions. The system — which cost $193 million to construct — runs three data applications: law-enforcement inquiries, AVL updates on all users and two-way messaging.
The voice system is fantastic. When we started designing this system in the early ’90s, we had no idea a system could be as powerful and flexible as this one. Literally, you can be anywhere in the state of Ohio and talk with someone located anywhere else in the state.
But we don’t have unlimited capacity, which, of course, we would like to have. We are using all of the available 800 MHz frequencies in the state right now, so our migration path out of this circumstance is to migrate to the 700 MHz frequencies when they become available, which won’t happen until 2009. However, we’re already past the halfway point of 2006 and, as you can imagine, it’s going to take considerable time and planning to execute that migration. We’re in the planning stages now.
Also, the system initially was designed for in-vehicle radios. We’re trying to increase the portable coverage and to migrate to an IP platform that would allow us to have unlimited subscribers and transition to the 700 MHz frequencies. It will cost about $100 million to do the migration to IP; we’re seeking federal funds for that because we built the system using state funds.
We’re the largest mobile data system we know of, covering the entire state. You can literally drive from Cincinnati in the southeast corner to Ashtabula in the far northeast section and have continuous mobile data coverage. One limitation is that we have just a 9.6 kb/s pipe to work with, which we know is pretty small. We want to migrate to a bigger pipe so we can do video monitoring and — more important for the Highway Patrol and law enforcement officers from the Department of Natural Resources — rapid downloading of mug shots and drivers license photographs, as well as the capability of real-time transmission of field reports. A lot of people are enamored of the ability to drive down the road and look at the inside of a bank that’s being robbed — and we certainly see the benefit — but we’re not going to burn up and die if we don’t have that.
We have a very active statewide interoperability executive committee, which has been very effective in knocking down the old smokestacks concerning the idea that your radio can’t talk to my radio. For example, Cincinnati has its own 800 MHz digital trunked system that is used by all police, fire and EMS in the city and in Hamilton County. We have an agreement that calls for the MARCS system to be embedded in all Cincinnati police cars so that they can switch over to the statewide system when they need to; similarly, Hamilton County has reserved the same number of system IDs for MARCS users. That’s just one example. We’ve entered into similar agreements with at least a dozen county or local agencies that have their own systems and with the state of Michigan.
This isn’t a traditional model — the biggest challenge was getting people past the fear that if they let you on their radio network, you’ll mess it up — but it can be replicated in other areas. The answer is to have leadership involved — chiefs, mayors, governors — rather than just the technical people. In Ohio, the key was the statewide interoperability executive committee. The FCC approved the formation of such committees primarily to oversee the allocation of the 700 MHz interoperability frequencies, but to be honest, we’ve gone far beyond that.
— AS TOLD TO GLENN BISCHOFF
HAVING ALL ON ONE SYSTEM IS KEY
BY LINDA FUCHS
NAME: LINDA FUCHS
TITLE: PROJECT MANAGER
ORGANIZATION: FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT SERVICES, ENTERPRISE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SERVICES
NETWORK USERS: 6500
POPULATION SERVED BY NETWORK: 17 MILLION
EMPLOYEES MAINTAINING NETWORK: 6 STATE EMPLOYEES MANAGE THE CONTRACT; MAINTENANCE IS CONTRACTED OUT
ANNUAL OPERATING BUDGET: $16 MILLION TO $18 MILLION
In 2000, the state of Florida signed a 20-year contract with M/A-COM to build the Statewide Law Enforcement Radio System, or SLERS, to let state agencies realize efficiencies and improve interoperability. Featuring 200 towers, the 800 MHz EDACS digital trunked system with Pro Voice was completed in May 2006.
Our big accomplishment was that we finally have all state law enforcement on one contiguous system that has 6500 users and covers 59,000 square miles, not including 25 miles offshore. Back in the late 1980s, when this idea came about, most state law enforcement agencies had their own systems. The vision was to put everybody on one system at 800 MHz. The accomplishment in May was that we have now completed that job.
This system is for state-level law enforcement — the highway patrol, state fire marshal, fish and wildlife and motor-carrier compliance within Florida. The contract with M/A-COM also provides for the addition of third-party subscribers. These can be federal or local public-safety people who want to use the system on a fee basis.
That program really got under way just a year ago, and we now have 10 different entities that have subscribed to join SLERS. Seven of them are using SLERS as their primary system, and three have signed up on an interoperability basis only.
Users have seen different improvements from what they had before. No. 1, they’ve got encryption, which they didn’t have before. It is digital, so there is an improvement in voice quality over the analog systems they had. And we have guaranteed maintenance so that means the system is always up at the level it should be.
The contract calls for 98% coverage for mobile radios, while portable coverage is 98% in defined portable-coverage areas. We have the coverage in the rural areas with 800 MHz — certainly our fish-and-wildlife users are out there in the middle of nowhere.
Some of the users just like the fact that everybody’s on one system. We’ve had multiple cases now where people have been able to help each other out, whereas before they would have never known that help was needed.
At times, a trooper may be the only trooper in that county. If they need assistance, the closest person may not be another trooper; it may be a motor-carrier officer, a fish-and-wildlife person or an insurance-fraud investigator who may be driving through that area.
Suddenly, there are more people to back you up and to assist you because they know about the incident. When they were on separate systems with separate dispatch centers, they would have never known.
One of the real benefits that we’ve seen that I don’t think anybody was planning on in 2000 was the durability of this system to meet the challenges of the hurricanes. It has survived incredibly well. In many cases, we have found that SLERS was the only system left; local systems were not as new and did not survive the storms.
We certainly don’t have any glaring shortcomings at this point that we have to plug. Our whole focus for the next year and half is rebanding. We have approximately 15,000 subscriber units that have to be reprogrammed four different times because our frequencies are both in general category and in NPSPAC. It is a seven-step process for each radio.
— AS TOLD TO DONNY JACKSON
ISOLATING RADIO TRAFFIC IS A PROBLEM
BY GLEN SAVAGE
NAME: GLEN SAVAGE
TITLE: TELECOMMUNICATIONS MANAGER
ORGANIZATION: CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF FORESTRY AND FIRE PROTECTION — LARGEST 24/7 FIRE DEPARTMENT IN THE USA.
NETWORK USERS: 2000 FIRE FIGHTERS FOR MOST OF YEAR, 3400 DURING SUMMER MONTHS
POPULATION SERVED BY NETWORK: STATE OF CALIFORNIA
EMPLOYEES MAINTAINING NETWORK: 6 CDF STAFF; MAINTENANCE BY STATE GENERAL SERVICES
ANNUAL OPERATING BUDGET: $7.8 MILLION
In addition to providing communications support to those fighting wildland fires, the California Department of Forest and Fire Protection’s VHF system — established in the early 1960s — serves 21 dispatch centers, each of which is an E911 secondary public-safety answering point. The network is used to dispatch for 36 of the 58 counties in California, handling more than 300,000 calls per year.
There are some things we’d like to change, but for the most part, it’s essentially what we need for both aspects of our job. Because we fight wildland fires, this system gives us the flexibility to expand and contract without major delays in buildout. We run on the same type of platform as the U.S. Forest Service does nationally, so it makes it easy for us to move out into an area where we have no coverage and put up a couple of portable repeaters.
We do the dispatching for 36 counties, and most of them have fire resources. We do the dispatching for a lot of volunteer departments, so we’re dealing with a lot of interoperability.
Our problem is isolating our radio traffic. We’re in the forestry-conservation band, and we have to share those channels with the other forestry-conservation agencies. CDF has most of the channels, but there’s not enough to do everything that we need to do. So all of our local nets are a repeated pair for the repeaters, but we also use those exact same pairs as command nets up and down the state, and we isolate them from where we use that channel as a dispatch channel.
We’re mandated to go to narrowbanding by 2013, so we’re upgrading all our infrastructure equipment. We’ve already upgraded all of our hand-helds and mobile radios to narrowband, but now we’re in the process of converting all of our repeaters, control stations and base stations to narrowband by 2010.
We use some satellite now, but it’s essentially for voice-telephone-type applications. When we get out to those remote parts of the state, having the satellite control is great for getting information back to a central location. But, for actual vehicle-to-vehicle communication, it does absolutely nothing for us.
Data would be fantastic, if there was a way to do it, and it was funded. But with a government agency, they say ‘Fix this’ and give you some money. You go out and buy something. Two years later, it’s obsolete, but you’re stuck with it. That’s what we need to get fixed.
The issue with the commercial services is that there’s no money to be made in rural areas. We use a lot of cellular, but as soon as we get in the woods, it doesn’t do you a bit of good.
If you’re going to go with data, the Cyren Call vision is about the only thing that I’ve seen that would build out a data network capable of producing what you’d need in the public-safety realm (MRT, June, page 52). It’s a great concept. It needs to be worked over a little bit to fill in the holes of who does what and who actually has control over it. But as far as making something that’s evergreen, that really sounds like a great idea.
— AS TOLD TO DONNY JACKSON
LIFE IN THE STICKS IS … DIFFERENT
BY CRIS SPIEGEL
NAME: CRIS SPIEGEL
TITLE: COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER
ORGANIZATION: LAMOILLE (ILL.) FIRE PREVENTION DISTRICT
NETWORK USERS: 32
POPULATION SERVED BY NETWORK: 1400
EMPLOYEES MAINTAINING NETWORK: 1
ANNUAL OPERATING BUDGET: VARIES (OVERALL DISTRICT BUDGET IS $45,000)
Serving a rural community covering 63 square miles in north-central Illinois, the volunteer agency uses a Motorola high-band UHF voice system. Data capability is limited to a fax machine located in one of its two fire stations — faxed information is physically brought to the fire ground or communicated verbally over the voice system.
We’re probably running some dinosaur stuff, but we’ve come a long way in the world of communications in the last five years. It used to be that we didn’t have any hand-held radios at all. We would use runners or simply yell across the fire ground during an incident. We only have so much money to work with. We’ve been fortunate in that we’ve gotten some grant money, but we’re a rural department, and we are forced to do the best we can with what we have to work with. We hold several fund-raisers throughout the year, the usual events like bingo, casino nights and auctions. But we had to cancel the annual turkey shoot for liability reasons.
We apply for three to four grants a year through FEMA and the Illinois Fire Service. So far we’ve only gotten one, but we got $66,000. We have a special-education teacher who has some training and experience in writing grants in that area who is now writing our grants. He says you have to tell them what they want to hear; you can have a legitimate need, but you have to put it in terms they can understand.
Our voice system is very adequate. We set up our own repeater about eight years ago to boost the signal, especially for the hand-helds, so we get a clear signal pretty much anywhere in the district. However, I would like to see the radios upgraded to be more user-friendly. Our people aren’t used to using radios every day — we have everything from farmers to bankers — and were intimidated by them. It’s been better since we moved to alphanumeric radios about five years ago, an upgrade that cost us a lot of money. Before the upgrade, they had to turn the dial to move to a different frequency, and they had a lot of problems with that — they didn’t always know what they were doing. They’re a lot more comfortable with the alphanumeric radios.
That’s our biggest problem. We find it very difficult to get them to train on their radios. Most of the departments around here are volunteer. How do you make a volunteer do something? We have dedicated volunteers, but this isn’t their full-time job. How do you make them come in for training when something they feel is more important has come up? If you push these guys too hard, you won’t have any help, and that’s an even bigger problem.
We have regular training events, but if somebody can’t make it that night, there’s not much you can do — it’s a tough deal. We’ve never lost a life, but things would have worked out better a few times if they had been a little more comfortable around the communications equipment. There have been instances when we’ve tried to reach a truck to tell it to turn around or to bring to an event a particular piece of equipment. Sometimes we’re talking on one channel, and they’re listening on another.
They’re not going to train unless they’re motivated, and it’s tough to motivate them. It’s probably going to take a firefighter getting hurt or killed to change that.
— AS TOLD TO GLENN BISCHOFF
OPERATIONAL SOLUTIONS NEED CONSIDERATION
BY DANA HANSEN
NAME: DANA HANSEN
TITLE: MANAGER/WIRELESS NETWORKS
ORGANIZATION: CITY AND COUNTY OF DENVER
NETWORK USERS: 10,000
POPULATION SERVED BY NETWORK: 550,000
EMPLOYEES MAINTAINING NETWORK: 15
ANNUAL OPERATING BUDGET: NOT AVAILABLE
Purchased in the late 1980s, the city of Denver’s single-site 800 MHz EDACS system has served the city’s communications needs for public safety — police, fire, medical and sheriff — and non-public safety, including street maintenance and parks and recreation departments’ personnel. Recently, it signed a contract with M/A-COM to build a seven-site, 20-channel simulcast system.
We’re migrating to full digital, end-to-end IP for public safety. Since Day 1, we’ve run analog and digital, so I don’t think the migration will be that difficult to go to full digital. For our non-public-safety users, our single site will still serve them, and they will remain analog. It’s just cost prohibitive to move all city users to a simulcast digital system.
Public safety has some shared channels with the non-public-safety users. For instance, animal control has some safety channels — they encounter a lot of angry people — as well as the coroner’s office and environmental health.
We also have the ability to make an agency call. For example, not too long ago, the police were looking for a lost kid. They said, ‘We need to let all our street maintenance people and parks and rec people know, too, because they are all over the city.’ So we created an agency call to notify all of their fleet of users separately. The 911 center can make that additional alert to them simultaneously. And a street maintenance person actually found the kid. At the end of the day, we need to answer, ‘What have we done for the next Columbine or the next plane crash?’ That’s when we started evaluating different products and took a hard look at NetworkFirst.
When we brought in the idea of NetworkFirst, it required all of us to work together and talk to our first responders. We had to come up with not only the technical solution but, more importantly, the operational solution, so it would be easy for them to use, so they understood it, and they would actually use it. With questions, it takes less than 10 minutes to explain how it works.
We use it, even for day-to-day events. That was the struggle, getting people to use it for day-to-day events so that when the big event happens, we use it and take it to the next level.
We’re currently running our data over EDACS, which we’re looking to replace. We’re looking at both commercial and private, with our preference being private because our private network has served us so well, and we’ve had 99.9% reliability, which is important to us in public safety.
We run some video surveillance — it’s in the initial buildout stages — but we don’t have any in-car video today. We’re looking at doing a pilot with M/A-COM with their VIDAmax, which is a WiMAX and 4.9 GHz combination.
For the first responders, it’s a lot more meaningful because they’re getting that information in real time and can see it, versus when you’ve got people from the neighborhood calling in and updating information to a call taker, who updates the dispatcher, who then airs the information back to the field. The time delay is a mess. This is a good way for the first responders to get real-time information about what is happening now.
— AS TOLD TO DONNY JACKSON
SIMPLER IS BETTER — FOR NOW
BY PAUL MAPLETHORPE
NAME: PAUL MAPLETHORPE
TITLE: CHIEF
ORGANIZATION: GREATER ROUND LAKE (ILL.) FIRE PROTECTION DISTRICT
NETWORK USERS: 230
POPULATION SERVED BY NETWORK: 50,000
EMPLOYEES MAINTAINING NETWORK: 1
ANNUAL OPERATING BUDGET: $20,000
Primary dispatch is through a Motorola VHF analog repeater system, with a UHF system used for voice and telemetry communications between ambulances and area hospitals. Data is transmitted using a computer-aided dispatch system that operates over Verizon Wireless’ broadband network.
Our system is VHF and analog, so we get great coverage. When the primary system goes down, usually because of a storm, we can easily switch to simplex operation with very little voice degradation, and we can still dispatch in that mode. Of course, our ability to use portables goes away, but for the most part, we’re using tactical simplex channels for fire ground operation anyway, so we don’t care. The only real limitation of our current system is that we’re running a single-repeater site. But we’re in the process of installing a voting system, which should improve coverage.
I’m not a big fan of digital systems for mission-critical communications. The sales pitch from the vendors is crystal-clear communications, but digital is not true voice — it’s data, and if some of those packets don’t make it, the radio can’t properly reconstruct the transmission on the receiving end, resulting in critical information being missed. In an analog system, you can usually make out enough of the message, even in fringe areas where coverage is spotty, to understand it.
The only way to get to 6.25 kHz-wide channels, which the FCC has mandated, is to use digital technology, so we know we’re going to have to go in that direction eventually. Hopefully, technology will evolve by that point to where we don’t have to worry as much about packet loss, and we’ll get better-quality radios.
However, coverage is going to be an issue — as it turns out, narrowband radio systems don’t cover as well as wideband systems. That was a bit of a surprise. When you think about it, you’re still running the same transmitter power and using the same antenna network, so your effective radiated power (ERP) is the same. The only thing that’s changed is your audio level, which you’ve cut in half. That seems to have made a significant impact because the systems I’ve seen that have converted to narrowband have experienced a fairly significant reduction in coverage.
Another future challenge is that the FCC also wants us to cut the ERP to make it easier to reuse frequencies. However, we might have to increase ERP to get the same coverage we had with our wideband systems. I can see that being a problem down the road. It’s a very delicate balancing act that’s affected by weather and time of year; for instance, whether there are leaves on the trees.
I am a fan of other technologies, however. Mesh networks, particularly in the 4.9 GHz band set aside for public safety, offer the best potential to move public-safety voice, data and video into the future. I’d also like to have the ability to track firefighters at an incident. This is vitally important from a safety perspective, particularly when something has gone wrong, such as when a firefighter has been knocked unconscious and can’t speak or hear his radio.
— AS TOLD TO GLENN BISCHOFF