PSCR panel, attendees tackle controversial local-control aspect of proposed FirstNet LTE system
FirstNet officials have promised that its public-safety LTE system will include local control, but first-responder representatives need to do a lot of work to determine how agencies access the broadband network and who will be given priority during times of network congestion, according to panelists and attendees of a PSCR session on the subject.
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PSCR panel, attendees tackle controversial local-control aspect of proposed FirstNet LTE system
The fact that the spirited discussion on local control was conducted during the final late-afternoon session of a three-day conference caught the attention of panelists.
“I love that, on the last panel of the last day, we're stirring up this kind of discussion—it’s fantastic,” Thiessen said. “Clearly, this is not just a technology thing. I think we have the right people thinking about the technology aspect of this, but we also need to be talking about the governance aspect of this.
“Maybe what we do is that we work with NPSTC [National Public Safety Telecommunications Council] to try to figure out how to make this more than just a technology local-control task force and try to look at maybe a bigger picture for governance, as well.”
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.