Panel at SBC event examines significant economic, policy challenges facing in-building communications

Ensuring that public safety can communicate while responding to emergencies inside buildings is a clear need, but identifying the proper solutions and making them affordable to building owners is a significant challenge, according to panelists exploring the topic during a recent Safer Buildings Coalition (SBC) event.

Mike Baltrotsky, assistant chief and technology manager for Montgomery County (Md.) Fire & Rescue, emphasized the critical nature of systems that allow first responders to communicate inside building while participating on a panel at the Safer Buildings Coalition Wireless Tech and Policy Summit in Washington,, D.C.

“It’s just go to work,” Baltrotsky said. “Whether it’s the responsibility of the city, the bank, the building owner [to install and maintain an in-building communications system], I don’t care. I care that it works.

“The only tool that every public-safety person uses every day, every time they run a call, are these communications devices. A cop may never use his gun. A fireman may pull a hose once a month. But for each and every call they run, they use these radios, these cell phones. They just have to work, and in many cases, they don’t.”

Of course, an inability to communicate puts public-safety personnel into a precarious situation. In fact, such a scenario is so dangerous that Baltrotsky indicated that it could result in limiting the response effort that could be made during an emergency such as a building fire.

“From a public-safety standpoint, we have to communicate,” Baltrotsky said. “If I can’t communicate, I may not take the risk to put people in that building or in that environment. There’s a risk-benefit [calculation] there, right? The number-one tools we use … have to work. And if they don’t, it changes my risk assessment significantly, from a public-safety standpoint.”

But in-building systems to support public-safety communications are not cheap, and deployment of these solutions is not the top priority for owners of office buildings and retail space that is decidedly less valuable in the post-COVID-19 era, according to Digital Locations CEO Rich Berliner.

“The climate for looking at these situations like in-building public safety—and all of the things that go with that—are sort of in the background,” Berliner said, noting that some real-estate companies are abandoning unprofitable properties. “The decision-making is [focused on] whether they’re going to keep that building, can they maintain that building, can they make money with that building, and can they use some sort of technology to upgrade.”

Michelle Geddes, CIO of the San Francisco Office of Emergency Management, echoed this sentiment.

“The state of the industry is really challenging, especially in San Francisco right now,” Geddes said. “If you look at our office-vacancy rate, it’s the most it’s ever been—it’s over 30%.”

This office-vacancy rate is a stark contrast to pre-COVID environment, when some reports indicated that less than 5% of San Francisco office space was empty.

Geddes also said that the city of San Francisco was working with the Westfield Centre—the top call-for-service location in the city—to have an in-building system installed, but that project has been scrapped after the large mall lost its anchor tenant Nordstorm.

“We had been working with them for years, and we priced out a solution for them—it was over $5 million,” Geddes said. “As the AHJ [authority having jurisdiction], we were working hand-in-hand with them to get them to a solution that would work not only for the fire department but also our police department.

“We’re now in a state where we just can’t move forward with them any longer, just due to the [economic] climate.”

Doug McElroy of AT&T said the carrier giant—the contractor building and maintaining the FirstNet public-safety broadband network—is working to develop effective solutions that are affordable to building owners.

“I think what we’re looking at is that we’ve got a long history of LMR, and it’s been very successful,” McElroy said. “Now, we’re going to bring LTE into that mix; it gives us a whole host of capabilities that we don’t have today. We’ll make sure this happens and that it happens quickly.

“How do we bring that LTE in to a building owner—who just needs a certificate of occupancy—without making it painful for him? That’s what we’re working on now, and we’ll have those answers very quickly, I think. We’re working on those systems now.”

Even if money was not an issue, Berliner said that building owners are seeking comprehensive, affordable solutions—a stark contrast to the fragmented in-building space that he compared to cooking an Italian dinner.

“The real-estate owners that are … spending money are looking for a solution that is an end-to-end piece,” Berliner said, citing recent conversations with real-estate representatives. “They’re complaining and talking about the fact that companies will come at them—sales people from diverse backgrounds—with, ‘I have spaghetti.’ Then, someone else comes and says, ‘We have sauce. There’s another company out there where you could get the cheese from,’ sending them from place to place.

“They want an all-in solution that involves IoT, wireless and CBRS private networks in one encompassing thing, with the understanding of what they’re up against with their building-management systems and their other systems within the ecosystem of that building. They want one solution, rather than a piecemeal [approach].”

In addition, the in-building communications system requirements can vary significantly among carriers and the authorities having jurisdictions—a reality that creates significant confusion for building owners, according to Berliner.

“If you look at this from the landlord’s position, they’re saying, ‘I don’t know what to do. I’m being bombarded from all sides, with, “You have to do this. You have to do this.” But I don’t know what the right solution for me is,’” Berliner said. “So, I’m sensitive to the fact that it has to work, but what has to work, and how do I put it in? How do I not overspend, and how do I not do the wrong thing?”

“By nature, we’ve got multiple carriers and multiple systems that have to go in. Therefore, the ability to go at a landlord with a concise plan of what’s going to happen and what you need in that building and doing all of the education that needs to go into this seems to me to be the only method that will work across the board. It’s sort of a Tower of Babel out there, at this point.”