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more on communication networks for humans
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2005 09:05:31 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Gerry Faulhaber <gerry-faulhaber () mchsi com> Date: September 10, 2005 10:17:20 PM EDT To: dave () farber net Subject: Re: [IP] more on communication networks for humans Dave [for IP, if you wish]--The comments by Andrew Seybold and Mike O'Dell are very welcome and instructive. Yes, I understand the sometimes overwhelming problems of making this all work. O'Dell is correct that someone has to control how the radios work and who gets to speak to whom. But that really is a local issue. If local gov'ts and counties want their fire and police units to communicate, they can make it happen. But there must be the political will to overcome the parochial power struggles between the user groups. I have been speaking with our firefighters here in Sussex County, DE, where people take their fire companies very seriously, and they are well-funded by their communities. They confirm that (i) dispatch and coordination of radios is at the county level; (ii) there is a firewall between police and fire: nothing crosses it. Now let's make this clear: this is a Sussex County problem. It is not an FCC problem, nor an NTIA problem. Unless and until Sussex Country steps up to this and deals with their public safety interest groups, there will be no interoperability...period. If we count on DHS stepping up to the plate and making this work, God help us all.
My Sussex County friends also confirm that they could sure use more radios. But I'm not sure what it means to say that there is no money. There is always money; but people choose to spend it on other things. Our fire company has some very slick lifesaving, ambulance and fire fighting equipment. How come they don't buy more radios? Because they choose to spend it on something else. This is not to say that "something else" isn't important; but all life is about making such choices. I don't believe "there is no money." What there is is other choices that first responders prefer. Maybe they're right, maybe not; but there is money.
Problems with having enough channels? This is a clear signal the system needs to go digital. When the cellphone guys went digital, they increased their available channels severalfold from the old analog system. If public safety radio systems were as parsimonious with bandwidth, there'd be plenty to go around.
----- Original Message ----- From: "David Farber" <dave () farber net> To: "Ip Ip" <ip () v2 listbox com> Sent: Saturday, September 10, 2005 8:20 PM Subject: [IP] more on communication networks for humans
Begin forwarded message: From: Andrew Seybold <andy () 4mobility com> Date: September 10, 2005 7:56:16 PM EDT To: dave () farber net Subject: RE: [IP] communication networks for humans I have several comments about public safety--first responder communications since I am deeply involved in this.1) There is, in the fire service, what is known as the Incident Commandsystem. It says that the first on the scene becomes the incident commander, as the incident grows and 'bosses' show up the IC is handed upwards. As the incident grows so does the command structure, it is quickly divided into groups including incident control, logistics, and manymore, as the size of the incident continues to grow the teams are splint into divisions. One of the key principals of this system is that NO ONEever has more than five direct reports to them, if they need more they split the command structure yet again-- 2) Public safety equipment is old (mostly analog FM) because thesedepartments do not have the money to upgrade. Many of the public safetysystems I designed and sold in the late 1970's and 1980's are still in use (by the way we did install mobile data terminals in those days in many cities and counties). 3) There is a new digital standard for public Safety communications developed by APCO, known as APCO 25 and most of the newer radios todayinclude the capabilities of both analog and digital communications. But since it is only for public safety the prices for the equipment are veryhigh. But GSM, CDMA, WI-FI, WiMAX and other commercial technologies cannot meet the needs of the public safety community.4) Public safety channels are not contiguous, they are in the 30-50 MHz, 150-172 MHz, 450-470 MHz, on shared TV channels in the 470-512 MHz rangeas well as in the 800 Mhz band. There is 24 MHz of "new" public safety spectrum coming (someday) in the 700 MHz UHF TV band but who really knows when. The feds have their own channels, again spread out over a lot of spectrum and have duplicate systems in most cities. In fact theFBI and SS have systems that rival the locals but will not permit localuse of their channels even during a major emergency. 5) Command and control of a net is normally handled by the dispatch center-which coordinates traffic on the channels. Normally in a majorevent there is a command and control channel that permits the bosses to communicate directly with the command center (dispatch center), and thenthe orders are relayed on working channels including additional wide area and simplex channels as needed. Note--a dispatcher can "normally"handle about 60 individual units on a single channel, not more which iswhy large cities have many channels and they are usually divided into sectors.6) There are common fire and public safety channels in at least one band(150 Mhz) which every unit is supposed to have in their radios (Fire White for example which is 154.280 MHz), and the police have Clemars also in the same band. 7) There is a move to update the public safety radios--one proposal isto use the 700 MHz band to supply radios to local, state, feds and have these radios programmed over the air as people and equipment arrive at ascene. 8) Data is done either using their own channels or on public networks there is no consistency here at the moment and the "new" Apco 25 channels are so narrow that data services require a number of channels to be aggregated in order to provide even slow data speeds. 9) Secondary and admin communications is usually off-loaded to public networks such as Nextel's Direct Connect service but often times in a major event these channels--which have No priority are jammed. 10) Commercial wireless technology, in most cases, will NOT work forthese agencies because they need one-to-many and dispatch capabilities, they need wide-area systems so everyone can hear everyone else, and theyneed incident simplex channels for local coordination. 11) Many dispatch systems are making use of IP routers to tie together two or more different PS channels during an event. This occurs at the dispatch center BUT it means that a single conversation is taking up more than a single voice channel. 12) While public safety communications frequencies are coordinated byvolunteers to minimize interference between departments and areas, many departments are OUT of capacity and have been waiting for years for one or two extra channels, while gobs of unlicensed spectrum has been handed out for Wi-Fi and now WiMAX systems--ok, ok, mesh networks? Tell me how to do that over all of these channels, tell me how to coordinate all ofthis without any money to make it happen. 13) During major incidents the public networks are so jammed as to beuseless, and John J. Citizen has as much priority to get a call throughas the fire chief in charge of an incident.14) The ONLY way to fix all of this is with money and a vision, and that vision will take YEARS to accomplish--by the way, there is a reason thatthe CHP, for example, are still using 42 MHz (yes 42 MHz) for theirsystems, if they moved to 800 MHz they would need hundreds, yes hundreds of new radio sites and still would not be able to provide radio coveragein the mountains and rural areas--the higher you go in frequency the less range you can cover--Public Safety communications is the most miss-understood and maligned ofall of the radio services and it is because few understand the issues--in closing one more point--I guarantee that the public safetysystems, when up and operating cover their areas better than ANY publicnetwork--they have been designed to do that over the years--inside, outside, and everywhere, they HAVE to provide that level of coverage. They are all backed up with emergency power and batteries, redundantcircuits and the best in tower locations. But it is a fact of life thatgenerators and batteries do not work very well under water.Many a police officer has been asked if they had to do without their gunor their radio which they would pick and the answer is always, take my gun, leave me my radio! Just my three or four cents Andy ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as gerry-faulhaber () mchsi com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ipArchives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting- people/
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