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
    • IWCE 2022 Winter Showcase
    • IWCE 2023 Pre-event Guide
  • 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
    • IWCE 2023 Pre-event Guide
    • IWCE 2022 Winter Showcase
  • 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

Urgent Matters


Commentary

Video-game proposal could help FirstNet with LTE decisions

Video-game proposal could help FirstNet with LTE decisions

Can video-game technology help FirstNet determine future public-safety requirements for the nationwide public-safety LTE network? Textron Systems officials believe it can.
  • Written by
  • 14th February 2013

We live in a country that operates using the representative democracy model. There’s a very good reason for that—there are more than 315 million people living in the U.S., which makes a direct democracy infeasible. But wouldn’t it be nice if we could weigh in on every legislative matter that is considered at the local, state and federal levels?

A similar thought occurred to project-management firm Textron Systems, which hosted a vendor roundtable a couple of weeks ago in Washington, D.C., that examined the initial work of FirstNet, the entity within the NTIA that is overseeing the effort to design and deploy the first nationwide broadband communications network for first responders that will leverage LTE technology.

Textron believes that NPSTC—which developed the statement of requirements for the network’s launch phase that was submitted to FirstNet in December—and the Public Safety Advisory Committee—which was created to guide FirstNet in the design and implementation of the network—are quality organizations. However, Textron officials believe their perspectives are too narrow to provide FirstNet with the big-picture view it needs to make highly informed decisions.

“There are 60 people on the PSAC, something like that. … is it really fair to ask those 60 people to make the critical decisions about what’s necessary for maybe 20,000 or 30,000 different agencies across the country?” said Paul Hertzberg, Textron’s chief engineer.

To find out what public safety really needs in this network, “we need the guys in the cars to give their opinion,” added Carl Holshouser, the firm’s director of business development.

This brings us back to the premise of this column, which is, how does one go about getting the input of tens of thousands first responders? A survey is out of the question, because it would take too long to gather the information from so many participants and then to crunch the data. Moreover, how the survey is constructed could bias the outcome. Textron had similar thoughts, so they developed a wiki and a video game to do the job. The former already is up and running, while the video game may be ready for launch next month.

“If we had FirstNet’s resources, it would go a lot faster,” Hertzberg joked.

The video game is particularly intriguing, because tens of thousands of first responders can be playing at any given time, which creates an enormous opportunity to generate massive amounts of data for analysis. Users sign in and adopt an avatar, then are immersed in a variety of first-responder scenarios in which they are presented with various communications options.

“The video game—particularly if we can get 10,000, 20,000 or 100,000 people playing—will allow us to record all of that input, and then we’ll be able to automatically parse out all of the features that are used most often,” Hertzberg said.

Hertzberg said that the more information that FirstNet has at its disposal the better, because decisions made in the design stage can have a disproportionately profound impact on the network’s cost and operation.

“If you get off on the wrong foot—if you get the requirements wrong, or if assumptions are made about things that have to be done that, at the end of the day, didn’t need to be done—you don’t find out about that until most of the cost of the system already has been committed,” Hertzberg said.

That’s a bad time to find out.

“That’s because it’s too late to change it,” Hertzberg said. “It’s either too hard to change it at that point in time, or if you do change it, the costs will be astronomical.”

Of course, Textron isn’t doing all of this solely because they have a soft spot for public safety; rather, they’re hoping to impress FirstNet with their ingenuity and initiative enough to be give a project-management role of some sort, a point the Holshouser readily acknowledged.

“We’re betting on the come,” he said.

I have conflicting thoughts on all of this. On the one hand, NPSTC and the PSAC may be small in number, but they are huge in terms of intelligence and experience. I certainly would be comfortable with any recommendations that they would provide to FirstNet.

On the other hand, I’ve always believed that you can’t have too much information when you’re trying to make an informed decision, especially when the stakes are high. We live in the “Big Data” era, and if Textron’s wiki and video game can gather and analyze an enormous amount of data efficiently and quickly enough, why wouldn’t FirstNet give them a chance to do so? Knowledge is today’s currency, and this might be a chance for FirstNet to enrich its knowledge base.

Tags: Public Safety System Management Commentary Long Term Evolution (LTE) NTIA/FirstNet System Design System Operation Urgent Matters Commentary

Most Recent


  • Crown Castle's fiber and small cell business under fire – again
    Elliott Investment Management, an activist investor firm, is taking aim at Crown Castle again, arguing the company needs to overhaul its management and potentially put its fiber business up for sale. Importantly, Elliott said it now owns roughly $2 billion in Crown Castle stock. That’s double what the company owned in 2020 when it embarked on […]
  • GSMA calls for EU 'fair share' and mergers support amid traffic growth
    The GSMA has backed ‘fair share’ demands for Big Tech to contribute to network costs and called for more European Union leniency on telco mergers in the latest version of its annual European Mobile Economy Report, which forecasts continued growth in data traffic with 5G adoption. The report from the non-profit group forecasts that mobile data […]
  • Scattered Spider hops nimbly from cloud to on-prem in complex attack
    The group behind the high-profile MGM cyberattack in September has resurfaced in yet another sophisticated ransomware attack, in which the actor pivoted from a third-party service environment to the target organization’s on-premise network in only an hour. The attack by Scattered Spider, an ALPHV/Black Cat ransomware affiliate, sealed the group’s position as a formidable adversary for large enterprises […]
  • AI-powered robot dogs tested to find explosive devices
    The U.K. government recently hosted a hackathon to test the use of AI-enabled robot dogs for bomb disposal tasks, reporting promising results. Organized by the Defence AI Center (DAIC), the hackathon saw 40 programmers leveraging AI and robotics to complete several hazardous tasks that would otherwise be undertaken by Army bomb disposal experts. Throughout the […]

Related Content

Commentary


Land mobile radio (LMR) systems are just as vulnerable to cyberattacks as any other networks used in the public-safety sector. Here’s what to do about it.

  • 1
7th November 2023

September 3GPP Plenary meetings feature Release 18 progress, Release 19 beginnings

13th October 2023

Better technology can help solve the public-safety staffing crisis

26th June 2023
view all

Events


UC Ezines


IWCE 2019 Wrap Up

13th May 2019
view all

Twitter


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.