PSCR panel, attendees tackle controversial local-control aspect of proposed FirstNet LTE system
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PSCR panel, attendees tackle controversial local-control aspect of proposed FirstNet LTE system
FirstNet is building a nationwide broadband network for first responders that supposedly will provide local control to public-safety agencies using the system, but determining what that should include and how it should be implemented will require a lot of work, based on debate conducted during a session at the Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) stakeholders meeting in Colorado earlier this month.
“Whenever I talk with a user about what makes them uncomfortable with a nationwide network, they always said, ‘I’m OK with it, as long as we have local control,’” said panelist Andrew Thiessen, division chief for the Institute of Telecommunications Sciences (ITS). “My immediate follow-up [question] was always, ‘What does that mean?’ And I got a different answer each time I asked that question.”
Most of the differences were not philosophical; instead, the differences stated included different approaches and aspects of local control, Thiessen said.
Session moderator Steve Devine, assistant director for the Missouri Statewide Wireless Interoperability Network (MOSWIN), expressed a similar sentiment as he introduced the notion of local control.
“Local control is a huge part of the nationwide public-safety broadband network,” Devine said. “We all know that it has to happen. What’s less clear is how and when.”
Indeed, there are several aspects of local control that need to be addressed, from network-design elements like site selection and hardening to device management. Wim Brouwer, CTO of Alcatel-Lucent's FirstNet team, suggested that devices might be managed most efficiently by utilizing a carrier model that includes store fronts that are able to serve multiple public-safety agencies in a given geographic area.
But the biggest issue raised was how network resources should be managed during an emergency, including which entities should be allowed to use the system and which ones should be given priority access during a given incident. Devine noted the importance of pre-planning incidents as much as possible to create policies that could be implemented automatically when they occur.
Audience member Richard Mirgon, former president of the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO), expressed support for the notion of establishing policies for automated prioritization but noted that it can get very complicated during large events involving agencies with overlapping jurisdictions.
“Picture this: the world is falling around you, and I’m walking into a building where there’s been an active shooter and I’ve got two different fire agencies responding out of two different CAD systems, which are setting priorities and that are trying to treat patients, while my SWAT team is trying to go into a building to neutralize the active shooter, and you’ve got command-and-control people,” Mirgon said.
“Which CAD system takes priority, and how do you determine which one is more important than the other in an automated system like this? How does that work?”
While LTE has many layers of prioritization that can be implemented dynamically in a real-time manner, panelists acknowledged that determining how network resources are utilized needs to be determined by public safety.
“I wish technology could solve that problem, but I don’t know that it can,” said panelist Gino Scribano, a fellow on the Motorola Solutions’ technical staff.
Audience member Steve Williams, chief technology officer (CTO) for the Florida Highway Patrol, said determining prioritization will be difficult, but the fact that public-safety officials can have input into prioritization on the FirstNet system is an opportunity that should not be squandered.
“I ask anybody in this room, ‘What control do you have now [over broadband data]?’” Williams said. “You have none, so you’re at the mercy of the commercial network. I run a lot of broadband data, I run a lot of applications—a lot of mission-critical applications—but I have zero control.
“What I’m hearing is encouraging out of industry, and what I’m hearing is encouraging out of PSCR. We have an opportunity in public safety that we haven’t had in years, that I haven’t had in my career.”
Everyone is getting way down
Everyone is getting way down in the weeds on this one. All we need to do is prioritize the bandwidth to Priority 1 and 2 users; Priority 3 usage will be limited in that geographic area until the incident commander says so…locally. All this talk about data traffic, video and handsets is not affective. Simplify this to overall Priority 1 and 2 users have precedence; even Priority 1 has precedence to Priority 2, but we will never come close to knocking anyone off the bandwidth (notice I did not say spectrum). This is another reason why trying to prioritize the spectrum is not a good idea, these kind of issues get raised.
As for Local Control, it will be mandated. State’s have their own legislative processes and controls that demand it, thus the reason we have local Police, Fire and EMS type services.
Example: we have the FBI at the Federal level, but States have their own internal Bureaus of Investigations as well. States have their own Emergency Management Organizations as does the Feds with FEMA. There is no such thing as a National Police Force, not yet anyway, they are always local. There is no one else to control an incident except local guys, unless a Federal Organization requests permission from the Governor of the given State to step in and help.
Just my thoughts. What do I know.
I’m just some guy and a blog…
This is a classic mistake.
This is a classic mistake. You have to think a little deeper than this. Who actually qualifies as a priority 1 user? How can that be dynamically determined, in a system in which static prioritization is established. This has been debated since cellular “prioritization” first started and can never be settled. Do fed responders (at any level including a buck private) have a higher priority than an EMS responder? System management can and never will be managable at the network level. By trying to settle network level use priorities before a network is even built is foolish. System use and priorities have to be dynamic and under the control of governance and command/control systems that can manage it on an incident by incident basis. While most do not wnat to think that it involves this much work, it really does and should. All systems require active use management, if they are going to be efficiently used and provide availability when needed.
Local control of FirstNet is
Local control of FirstNet is and will be a major issue in the months to come.
Maybe we should take notice of how the MABAS system in the Midwest works. In the event of a major fire or EMS incident, all communications for that incident are taken over by the regional MABAS communications center.
This leaves the local agencies with their communications channel (or IP subnet) free for local traffic.
The question is that of bandwidth at this point. This is specifically why I’m against permanent video use on FirstNet unless there is a way to remotely shut it down in such an incident to free up the bandwidth.
Some chatter that I’ve overheard indicates that some think that a community camera system could be entirely based on a FirstNet platform.
Just a few of my thoughts on this issue.