A few hurdles to overcome

One hardship related to these annual inspections is that evaluating signal strength for public-safety bands is largely a manual process, whereas the cellular industry can utilize automated tools, according to Greg Glenn, senior director of RF engineering at SOLiD Technologies.

“Right at this particular time, LMR is tested in a different fashion than cellular,” Glenn said during an interview. “None of the cellular equipment providers provide equipment that will typically cover the public-safety region, specifically, if you get down to the 450 MHz and 150 MHz region—they don’t provide equipment that necessarily covers those bands.

“I guess because the public-safety market isn’t large enough for a lot of cellular equipment testing companies, they really aren’t building automated equipment.”

Establishing a similar standard for in-building systems supporting public-safety communications would be helpful, although the in-building public-safety LMR market thus far has not been large enough for manufacturers to develop automated measurement tools, according to Mario Bouchard, president and CEO of iBwave, a company that has developed software that Buechley said has become the “de facto standard” for designing and measuring in-building cellular solutions.

One potential benefit of the nationwide first-responder broadband communications network being built by FirstNet is that it will leverage commercial LTE technology in the 700 MHz band, so automated in-building design and measurement systems used by carriers can be utilized by public safety.

“When we look at the market today, we see public safety doing what the cellular world was doing 6-7 years ago, where everything was a bit messy—you have a bit of everybody doing a bit of everything,” Bouchard said. “I think this needs to change.

“The goal is really to attach public safety to a quality system—attach what you already have with cellular to public safety—and do the proper planning and design in order to ensure the quality that you need.”

Still, the biggest question for jurisdictions seeking to implement codes requiring support of in-building communication for public safety is how to handle existing structures. For the most part, jurisdictions rule that structures built before the code is implemented do not have to meet the public-safety requirement, but Bellevue has included language that mandates building owners to support public-safety communications when certain levels of remodeling are done, Erb said.

Given the market demands by building occupants and visitors to remain connected via myriad mobile devices, now is an ideal time to have building owners address public safety’s needs as they implement systems to serve commercial needs, Erb said.

“[Building owners] are being forced almost—driven by the public—to update their buildings, so that people have the ability to access anything and everything from their handheld device,” he said.“With these buildings being remodeled and updating their systems, now is the prime opportunity for them to … get the public-safety side of it addressed.”

Erb also said he believes building owners that provide in-building support to public-safety communications should receive a financial benefit for their efforts, in of the form of reduced insurance premiums.

“It’s just my opinion, but if you have a burglar system, a fire-alarm system or a sprinkler system in your home, your insurance company cuts your rates,” Erb said. “If a building owner puts in public-safety communication and beefs up their wireless coverage, why would they not [cut insurance rates for that]? That would be my question.”