In-building coverage critical for public-safety personnel and the people they protect, panelists say

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Fourteen years after 9/11, providing optimal public-safety communications inside buildings remains an unsolved problem, especially in the case of multi-level buildings in densely-populated areas, speakers on the APCO 2015 “Making Buildings Safer Through Wireless Technology” panel said yesterday.

Alan Perdue, executive director of Safer Buildings, Mike Collado, vice president of marketing for SOLiD,  and IWCE Communications Editor Donny Jackson spoke about the lingering challenges with public-safety personnel utilizing land mobile radio (LMR) and Long Term Evolution (LTE) to communicate with each other and with occupants in buildings.

Large occupancy buildings that would have once been primarily wire-lined are now supported by wireless networks, Jackson said. The FCC estimates that about 40% of households no longer have a landline connection, and those household need reliable in-building connectivity to call 911 during an emergency.

“It’s probably a greater percentage in places like apartment complexes, where you have single people trying to make ends meet,” Jackson said. “The one communication tool that they have is the wireless device, as opposed to a wireline phone.”

Some of those apartment complexes have had to undergo public-safety communications tests to ensure radio frequency from LMRs will permeate through newly constructed buildings due to the codes set by National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and the International Fire Code (IFC). However, even with minimum standards and requirements for building owners, buildings old and new still fall through the cracks.

“Often times in large buildings, RF signals are prevented from communicating throughout the building,” Collado said. “That’s a real threat, that’s a real challenge. That’s a challenge that industries—public safety, the wireless industry, cellular industry and venue owners need to work to solve.”

Though stakeholders have been aware of the ongoing in-building communications challenges, progress has been slow, Perdue said. In some cases, standards require building owners to deploy distributed antenna systems (DAS) that can extend public-safety mobile coverage and capacity, but some building owners have delayed the deployment due to costs or conflict over whether to integrate public safety and cellular DAS or deploy a separate system solely for public safety.