Is LMR the best solution for first responders? Should 4.9 GHz license go to the FirstNet Authority?

Recently there was an article titled “LMR remains most reliable technology for public-safety communications,” written by the executive director of the Forestry Conservation Communications Association (“FCCA”). To some extent there are some truths to that, but it is not an absolute. Indeed, it is far from it.

There were some assertions in the article that I believe need correcting. To begin with, the statement that “The initial plan for the broadband network was to have it controlled and operated by public-safety entities, although they could award contracts to suppliers, as needed” is incorrect.

The first group to try and build a nationwide public safety broadband network was the Public Safety Spectrum Trust (PSST) (note: The FCCA was part of the PSST). The PSST clearly had the focus and intent to build a nationwide network where first responders would be users of a single system.

After the D Block auction—associated with the PSST effort—failed in 2008, the next group up was the Public Safety Alliance (PSA) that spearheaded the 2012 legislation that created FirstNet. When that group was created, which I was part of, there were several meetings to discuss how to get the network built. After reviewing all the dynamics around local builds, it was decided that it should be one nationwide network overseen by a public safety-led board. That is clearly reflected in the FirstNet legislation that states—in section 6202—that the law calls for a “single national network.”

So, the plan has always been one nationwide network. The statement that this occurred through a “series of political moves” is patently false. FCCA was part of the process from Day 1 and would have been considered a participant of the so-called “political moves”.

Next, the article author asserts that the network is not built to any mission-critical standards. What he fails to recognize is that many organizations and people have participated in working groups or committees to address those issues and provide input to FirstNet. Specifically, the FirstNet’s Public Safety Advisory Committee (PSAC), which has a representative from every major public-safety association, has significant influence in what elements go into network hardening in the FirstNet network. Again, that group also includes FCCA.

What you need to understand is that broadband/cellular networks are designed differently than LMR. One example is that they are designed with over-lapping coverage, so each site doesn’t need full redundancy.  If one site goes down, another will pick up that traffic and—with priority and preemption—that isn’t a problem for public-safety users. Another is you can do Wi-Fi calling or data on Wi-Fi. You can’t do that on LMR. Currently in development is the ability to connect via satellite.  These are just a few examples of how redundancy is very different in a data world.

Next, the issue of push-to-talk (PTT) on the network was also mentioned. I agree that the original concept was for a data-only network. But guess what? The world has changed.

Public Safety is requesting—no, demanding—to have push-to-talk. The reality is almost everything we do in technology is now a data packet. Even an LMR system doesn’t use analog voice anymore. So, if it is all data, why not use the best data path?

Many agencies have decided that path is FirstNet. That is local control. They decide locally who gets access to the network and under what priority.

This idea that LMR is almost bulletproof is a falsehood. A good friend of mine built a new LMR network in a major city that he swore was fully redundant, backed up, had no single point of failure, and would never go down. About a year later, it did. After a day and a half, they found a single box that controlled certain critical elements was defective.

In another example, a friend was a police executive who had been assigned to oversee a new 800 MHz trunked system. After a few weeks of being operational, it went down and the outage lasted about 10 days. It took the vendor that long to find the problem and correct it. Even in the days when I was a police officer in a major metro area, our repeater sites occasionally failed.

Look, there are always dead spots. Is that a failure of the network? On even the best of days, fire hydrants can be dry, guns will jam, and equipment won’t start. That is the nature of being a first responder. We plan for those failures, because they will happen.

Every tool and technology has a risk, and we plan for and train for those risks. The statement made in the other article “that smart public-safety agencies will maintain and even upgrade their local land-mobile systems” is insulting and wrong.  If you choose FirstNet, does that mean you are not smart?

Here is one clear problem not addressed in the article:  The lack of interoperability between locally built networks. The single biggest factor is this definition of “local control and build.” Again, this a “been there and done that” story.

Take a look around and see how many overlapping LMR networks we have that don’t talk to each other. They are countless. Why does that happen? There are several reasons.

Back in the 1990s, one guy designed a state system specific to one vendor, because he hated the other vendor. He also knew—because he was smarter than everyone else—that a technology called Open Sky was the best, even after other states had failed at deploying it. I remember him saying that those people weren’t smart enough, and he was—true story.

Or how about a major city that has two overlapping P25 networks in which the vendor sold each network with a different encryption program, so they couldn’t talk to each other. This generated more revenue for the vendor. That is what happens when vendors have too much influence.

How about the systems that never got completed because they ran out of money? Folks, we as public safety have created most of these interoperability issues ourselves, or we were led down a path by vendors that were focused on their own interests, rather than the interests of public safety.

Look around. FirstNet is everywhere, has more coverage than any other public-safety network ever built, and it has more than 5.5 million users. Public-safety agencies subscribing to FirstNet have more local control than ever, with apps that they can use nationwide. One thing that local control includes is the ability to raise a user’s priority, as needed. You can’t do that on any other network.

This takes us to the topic of the 4.9 GHz public-safety spectrum. Do you really want to take this spectrum and only have those that have the money to build leaving only a few agencies using the spectrum? That is the problem we have today and have had for the last 20 years.

This also limits this ecosystem to a few vendors who will build proprietary equipment that may not be interoperable and will be very expensive, because of the small and limited ecosystem.)  That is what the author of that article and a few others are advocating.

Most of our nation’s public-safety agencies will not have the money, nor the skill sets, to build their own. As proof, I offer up the fact that public safety has had that authority to do what they are suggesting on 4.9 GHz spectrum for more than 20 years, and it hasn’t happened.

Only 4.2% of those eligible users ever used it, and those users must be protected for the future. There will never be nationwide use in their proposed model.

Twenty years of experience has proven that this approach won’t work. Proponents argue there is a lock on new licenses. Well, there hasn’t been for the last 20 years. They claim their plan would improve the equipment ecosystem. It didn’t for the last 20 years.

I can tell you that, 20 years ago, the equipment was cheap and easy to deploy. I know, because I built a network with it, and this spectrum and technology never gained any momentum.

There were multiple cities across the country that tried to build broadband networks around 2012. They all failed because of cost.

The only way to get nationwide use of 4.9 GHz is to add this spectrum to the FirstNet Authority, and to let that organization figure out the best use for public safety. Remember, if the FirstNet Authority is licensed the spectrum, it is public safety’s, and the FirstNet Authority would determine how the spectrum is utilized.

One last point. One of the entities arguing that the 4.9 GHz spectrum should be used locally stated that the cost would be about $3 million per cell site. New York City tried to build its own system, at a cost of $500 Million to build and $38 million a year to operate. They couldn’t make it work for that amount of money. That’s a lot of money.

The fact is that it will cost millions to build and deploy locally—the same taxpayer funds that also are supposed to be used to hire public-safety personnel and pay for many other local-government initiatives. So, the question to everyone is: If you had to choose how to spend that money, are you paying for a very expensive network with significant maintenance and refresh costs or do you use that money to hire first responders to protect your communities?

Richard (Dick) Mirgon is a public-safety consultant focused on FirstNet. He is a Past President of APCO International and has more than 35 years of public-safety and first-responder experience. During that period, he worked as a deputy sheriff and a county department head, where he managed LMR and data networks.