PSCR panel, attendees tackle controversial local-control aspect of proposed FirstNet LTE system

Williams said he is particularly passionate about the subject, because an inability to communicate in 1986 resulted in Williams being exposed to hazardous materials that resulted in a five-day stint in the hospital, during which time it was questionable whether he would survive.

“Here we are in 2014, talking about the same stuff. It is shame on public safety, my friends,” he said. “It’s true, everybody doesn’t always get along, but why is that? Why can’t public safety, as an entity, start to learn from its mistakes and start cooperating and build on something that we have an opportunity to build on?

“These are good conversations, and—with good minds and people helping other people get along—we can get this done. If we don’t get it done, we will have failed as a community.”

One audience member noted that prioritization is more important on an LMR network, because capacity is limited by the nature of narrowband technology, while LTE on FirstNet spectrum will provide 100 times more voice capacity than is available today.

Indeed, LTE offers much more capacity than LMR, but the capacity issue revolves around data, photos and video—not voice—that will be driven by machine-to-machine connectivity and situational-awareness applications, according to another audience member, Mike Barney, chief LTE engineer for the Texas Department of Public Safety.

“The challenge is going to be how do we efficiently move that data, not necessarily voice,” Barney said. “I have a little bit of background in some of the military intelligence systems, and it is very easy to swamp 10 MHz, with machine-to-machine and situational awareness [communications]. We really need to start looking at what are these additional systems going to add, and we need to start looking at the future here, because I also believe that voice is going to become something that’s infrequently used.

“Instead of saying, ‘Adam 12, meet the woman at such-and-such for a 459,’ there’s going to be a display that automatically goes to the GPS, [the officer is] going to press a button—he may not even have to press a button—and there’s virtual voice involved. I hope, as we go through this, we realize that we probably don’t have an idea how much data we’re going to use, but I’ve never found any system that has enough.”