LA-RICS LTE project shrinks as cities opt out, refuse to approve sites

With its public-safety LTE system scheduled for completion in six months, the Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System Authority (LA-RICS) has seen the scope of the deployment shrink as some member cities have opted out of the project or refused to approve sites, according to LA-RICS Executive Director Patrick Mallon.

“We started out with 232 sites [for the public-safety LTE network], and we’ve dropped about 39, so far,” Mallon said Wednesday during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “We’ve dropped those 39 basically because the cities were not willing to support the installation of a site.”

“In cities where we’ve dropped four or five sites, it will certainly impact coverage. In other areas, where we’ve dropped a single site, it doesn’t impact coverage, but it impacts capacity.”

As of Wednesday, five of the LTE sites were completed, and 35 sites were under construction, Mallon said. LA-RICs had permits to build 19 sites, and permits for another eight sites were expected to be finalized by the end of the week, he said.

Mallon said that 13 of the 86 cities in LA-RICS have opted out of participating in the construction of the public-safety LTE and P25 LMR systems that are being built in the area. Other cities have unitl November—when the funding plan becomes effective—to opt out of the LA-RICS program, he said.

Thus far, the decision by these 13 cities to opt out of the program has “impacted the total cost model by 8.7%,” but it is unclear how much of that will be made up by savings associated with the construction and maintenance of fewer sites, Mallon said.

Although 13 cities have opted out of the LA-RICS program, it is still possible for the first responders in those jurisdictions to use the LA-RICS system, Mallon said.

“Of these 13 cities that have opted out, a couple of the cities are allowing us to continue to install equipment in their cities,” he said. “We anticipate that there might be willingness for them to participate as a subscriber to the LTE system.

As part of the LA-RICS agreement with FirstNet, “we’re obligated to provide PSBN [public-safety broadband network] coverage to any and all public-safety entities that want to participate," Mallon said. "So, even if they’ve opted out, they have offered to let us continue to install equipment in their cities. Because of that, we anticipate that they will want to participate in the PSBN system.”