LA-RICS looks to state, feds for help to salvage public-safety LTE project

Representatives of the Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System (LA-RICS) will visit Washington, D.C., later this month to ask federal officials and lawmakers for additional time to build a public-safety LTE project that has unraveled amid local public pressure in recent weeks, according to LA-RICS Executive Director Patrick Mallon.

Recent actions by the Los Angeles City Council, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and elected officials from other neighboring jurisdictions have halted construction in many key areas, resulting in LA-RICS currently having access to “about 50” of the original 232 cell-site locations for the LTE network, Mallon said.

LA-RICS can consider other cell-site locations—Mallon specifically mentioned properties owned by the state of California—to provide the kind of coverage and capacity that LA-RICS envisioned for local first responders, but redesigning the network would take time that is not available today. The LTE deployment is being funded primarily by $154.6 million in Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) grants that must be spent by Sept. 30, according to current law.

With this in mind, Mallon and members of the LA-RICS joint powers authority (JPA) will travel to Washington, D.C., during the week of April 20 to speak with federal officials and lawmakers in an effort to secure an extension to the Sept. 30 deadline, Mallon said.

LA-RICS “absolutely” needs an extension to build the kind of public-safety LTE network originally envisioned, Mallon said. LA-RICS and prime contractor Motorola Solutions were going to be hard-pressed to meet the Sept. 30 deadline to meet construction deadlines under the planned schedule, much less complete a network after including additional time to redesign the system, he said.

“To build out a full system that truly would support public safety, [an extension to the Sept. 30 grant deadline is needed],” Mallon said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “To do something that would be centered to some reduced operations, we would still hope that we would be able to do that,” if no extension was provided.

Mallon made the comments after yesterday’s meeting of the LA-RICS JPA board of directors. During the meeting, the board directed Mallon to provide a report by April 10 “that analyzes the coverage, viability, costs and construction timeframe of an LTE system utilizing the remaining Los Angeles County sites, independent city sites, and any other governmental agency sites that could be added to augment the system.”

This motion also included the following statements, which provide some insight into the LA-RICS strategy as officials prepare to visit Washington, D.C., later this month:

“Discussions are currently underway between LA-RICS and NTIA to determine the viability, coverage and costs associated with an LTE system with a reduced numbers of LTE sites in Los Angeles County,” the motion reads. “Exploration into augmenting the system with sites located on other government agencies property is also underway. Finally, the possibility of building a core system that could be expanded later when First Net develops a national PSBN should be examined.

“Developing a viable pathway forward will be the subject of meetings with federal officials in late April.”

In other action, LA-RICS board members directed Mallon to hire public-education and outreach specialists quickly, noting that “public outreach may be required before the next scheduled LA-RICS board meeting” in May. Elected officials for both the city and the county have said that LA-RICS should provide greater public outreach and education that would address the concerns of key stakeholders, including local residents and public-safety unions.

Concerns about the proposed LA-RICS LTE cell sites have grown during recent weeks, with a firefighters union running radio spots and video advertisements that indicate the RF emissions from the LTE cell sites can cause cancer, ALS, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease to firefighters and/or nearby residents.

These tactics by the union have “generated a lot of undue concern” about the safety of the proposed LA-RICS LTE sites, but the “perception” that RF emissions from the LTE sites are dangerous is something that LA-RICS needs to address, Mallon said.

Mallon reiterated some of the information he cited when addressing this topic last month during a presentation at the IWCE 2015 conference, noting that almost everyone in today’s society routinely is exposed with RF emissions from a variety of sources, including Wi-Fi systems and coverage from commercial cell sites. None of these have been proven to be dangerous, and LA-RICS plans to deploy the same LTE technology as commercial carriers do.