LA-RICS inks deal with Motorola Solutions for public-safety LTE network

Of the 17 LA-RICS board members, 14 voted for the Motorola Solutions LTE contract, with one member voting in opposition, one member abstaining and one member absent from the meeting, according to sources. The contract was signed shortly after the LA-RICS board meeting. Last week, LA-RICS board declined to vote on the contract with Motorola Solutions, opting to conduct more due diligence before considering the contract during today’s meeting.

Last August, Mallon and other LA-RICS officials made a presentation to the FirstNet board to outline the long-term communications plan for LA-RICS that includes the use of both P25 LMR and LTE technologies.

Mallon told the FirstNet board that the LTE project is critical for public-safety communications, because Los Angeles public-safety entities are required to vacate their LMR operations from the T-Band spectrum (470-512 MHz) by 2021, and there is not enough spectrum available in other bands to simply migrate existing narrowband systems. Instead, LA-RICS hopes to offload enough non-mission-critical voice traffic to the LTE system to allow mission-critical voice communications to be carried over narrowband public-safety channels in the UHF and 700 MHz bands.

LA-RICS signed a contract with Motorola Solutions to build the P25 network at a cost that could total $149.6 million, if all phases of the plan are deployed. LA-RICS issued an RFP for the LTE network in August and began contract negotiations with Motorola Solutions in December for the project.