The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council Wednesday appeared set at our deadline to tentatively endorse LTE over WiMAX as the air interface for a proposed national public safety broadband network. APCO and the National Emergency Number Association endorsed LTE in a statement the groups released jointly Tuesday. NPTSC officials also discussed other technical issues regarding the proposed network Wednesday at a meeting of NPSTC’s governing board.
GENEVA -- An ITU-T study group is exploring the idea of globally harmonizing Common Alerting Protocol identifiers for “sender,” “source” and “language” elements, an executive said. A draft ITU-T recommendation has requirements for land mobile alerting broadcast capabilities for point-to- multipoint, multicast and broadcast warning and civic use.
Ahead of a Wednesday meeting on rules for the 700 MHz D block, scheduled by the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council, commenters responded to public safety questions asked by the FCC in its broadband inquiry in filings at the agency. APCO said it continues to support the “basic approach” for the D block originally adopted by the FCC, which is to sell the spectrum so a public-private partnership can build out a national public safety network. “Absent a national network approach, only those agencies with sufficient resources and expertise will be able to deploy broadband, and there is no assurance that systems will be interoperable or be able to take advantage of ‘off-the-shelf’ technologies and standards,” APCO said. In response to one of the questions asked by the FCC in the NOI, APCO said it’s difficult to say how public safety will use wireless broadband once it’s widely available. “In general, public safety is likely to have a substantial need for all types of video applications, both on a day-to-day basis and for major emergencies that require extensive command and control capability,” the group said. “Video will need to be real-time, with mobile (and probably airborne) capability over wide areas. High-speed, reliable access to specialized databases (for building diagrams, criminal records, medical information and images etc.) will also be critical for public safety personnel in the field. Communication will need to be two-way, with comparable speeds for upstream and downstream capability.” The National Emergency Number Association said public safety has an urgent need to modernize its communications systems. “911 and emergency communications and response systems remain largely stuck in the technology and mentality of the 20th Century at a time when 21st Century broadband-enabled technologies are being deployed throughout most other sectors in the U.S.,” NENA said. “The results are responders without numerous forms of available and useful information, emergency communications systems that are often inflexible and insufficiently redundant during major disasters, and overall system inefficiencies.” NENA said a public safety broadband network like one proposed for the 700 MHz D block should be based on a single standard and technology platform that “takes advantage of the significant research and development of the commercial wireless industry” and be supported by a “known and recurring funding source.”
The Office of Foreign Assets Control has issued a final rule, effective June 10, 2009, amending the Sudanese Sanctions Regulations to expand the scope of an existing authorization of certain imports and to authorize the importation of certain transshipped goods or services into the U.S. by the regional Government of Southern Sudan and its employees.
The view of IT from within the health care industry has changed since the mid-1990s when Aneesh Chopra started working at the Advisory Board Co., said the U.S. chief technology officer and assistant to the president. Then, hospital CEOs put technology “in a box unto itself” and generally thought of it as an “ever-growing capital-sucking sound,” he told a Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society conference.
About two percent of all full-power TV stations can’t switch to digital service and have stopped broadcasting or will do so by June 12, FCC officials said Wednesday at a Commission meeting. Among the 35 stations, 18 won’t transmit in digital for financial reasons, said Media Bureau Associate Chief Eloise Gore. All but one are owned by a bankrupt company, she said. Another 16 stations have digital construction issues that she expects to be resolved by year’s end, and one has a permit pending, Gore told reporters later. No other problems involving the 900-plus stations that are expected to switch to digital next Friday were identified at the meeting (CED June 3 p5).
Cybersecurity bills are proliferating in House and Senate committees because of gray jurisdictional lines, an aide told a cybersecurity conference hosted by Defense Daily Tuesday. Though President Barack Obama released his cybersecurity plan last week, “a lot of committees are looking toward the White House to provide … maybe a policy framework” that can guide committees’ marking up of their bills, said Jacob Olcott, staff director for the House Homeland Cybersecurity Subcommittee. He also urged companies to help lawmakers devise a way to speak to the public about cybersecurity that doesn’t conjure up “Orwellian” imagery.
President Barack Obama’s guiding principle in setting technology policy is to “resist isolation, overstatement, the notion that there’s only one right answer,” Susan Crawford, White House special assistant for science, technology and innovation policy, told the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in Washington Tuesday. “Tech policy is at the heart of this administration,” she said. A lawyer with the Obama transition predicted later that privacy activists could become strange bedfellows with an unpopular industry: cable companies.
President Barack Obama’s guiding principle in setting technology policy is to “resist isolation, overstatement, the notion that there’s only one right answer,” Susan Crawford, White House special assistant for science, technology and innovation policy, told the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in Washington Tuesday. “Tech policy is at the heart of this administration,” she said. A lawyer with the Obama transition predicted later that privacy activists could become strange bedfellows with an unpopular industry: cable companies.
Cybersecurity bills are proliferating in House and Senate committees because of gray jurisdictional lines, an aide told a cybersecurity conference hosted by Defense Daily Tuesday. Though President Barack Obama released his cybersecurity plan last week, “a lot of committees are looking toward the White House to provide … maybe a policy framework” that can guide committees’ marking up of their bills, said Jacob Olcott, staff director for the House Homeland Cybersecurity Subcommittee. He also urged companies to help lawmakers devise a way to speak to the public about cybersecurity that doesn’t conjure up “Orwellian” imagery.