”Convergence” in public safety communications could help “protect” the tens...
"Convergence” in public safety communications could help “protect” the tens of billions of dollars public safety has invested in traditional radios over many decades, said Andy Thiessen with the Commerce Department’s Public Safety Communications Research program. Agencies that have spent…
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millions on new radios “are not going to be looking to change over to LTE even if the LTE network could meet all of their needs,” he said on a Wednesday webinar sponsored by Urgent Communications and Harris Corp. “There’s political questions in play here as well … which is trying to make the best use of some massive investment that state or local government just made.” Convergence could take different forms, Thiessen said. “We could see convergence in the device … where maybe you have a land-mobile capability combined with an LTE capability on a single device,” he said. “We could call convergence simply the connection of a land-mobile radio capability into the LTE network itself or it could be some combination of both.” Thiessen said one key is to guarantee that public safety is no longer a niche market. Public safety has 2 million to 4 million users nationwide depending on who is counting, compared to more than 100 million each for Verizon Wireless and AT&T. “When public safety goes out to buy devices … clearly they're paying quite a bit more for those devices,” Thiessen said. The Department of Homeland Security has to rely on some 20 legacy systems, many of which were deployed more than 20 years ago, said Patrick Flynn, director of communications and outreach for the DHS Joint Wireless Program Office. LTE “enables us to leverage a wider pipe and save money, because we're able to leverage what’s currently out there,” he said. Flynn said DHS plans to play a big role in the new FirstNet once it is launched. “We have a great interest … in convergence,” said Felix Perez, director of the radio communications information division of Miami-Dade County, Fla. “Finally the IT shop is going to have to talk to the radio shop and it’s going to be a big improvement.” Perez said the county is in the process of replacing 24,000 radios and revamping its infrastructure, at a cost of some $200 million. “It’s like changing tires on a moving-fast freight train,” he said. “Today doing over-the-air programming with a land-mobile radio takes minutes,” said Joe Ross of consultant firm Televate. “With an LTE chipset inside the device it could take seconds. You could dynamically push out new fleet maps to the user community. There alone, I think it augments. I think a lot of people focus on how broadband is going to replace land-mobile radio. I don’t think there’s enough discussion about how broadband can augment today’s land-mobile radio.” Ross said “the more niche we make some of these devices … the more the costs are going to increase.” A recent study Televate did for Minnesota found that first responders preferred smartphones to traditional rugged devices by a 10 to one margin, he said.