[Infowarrior] - 9 Years After 9/11, Public Safety Radio Not Ready

[Richard Forno]

September 6, 2010
9 Years After 9/11, Public Safety Radio Not Ready
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/business/07rescue.html

By EDWARD WYATT

WASHINGTON — The inability of most firefighters and police officers to talk to each other on their radios on Sept. 11, 2001, at the World Trade Center — one of the most vexing problems on that day nine years ago — still has not been completely resolved.

The problem, highlighted in the 9/11 Commission Report, was seen again in 2005 after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Public safety officers from different jurisdictions arrived at the scene of those disasters only to find that, unable to communicate with each other by radio, they had to resort to running handwritten notes between command centers.

Despite $7 billion in federal grants and other spending over the last seven years to improve the ability of public safety departments to talk to one another, most experts in public safety communications say that it will be years, if ever, before a single nationwide public safety radio  system becomes a reality.

In the meantime, public safety and homeland security officials have patched together voice networks in some regions, including New York, that link commanders at various agencies. But the focus in Washington has turned to the development of the next generation of emergency communications — wireless broadband — seeking to succeed there where radio failed.

Many of the same issues that helped shape the current dysfunctional public safety radio networks threaten the creation of a uniform standard for wireless broadband communications.	

“For a brief moment in time, a solution is readily within reach,” James A. Barnett Jr., chief of the Federal Communications Commission’s public safety and homeland security bureau, told a Congressional hearing this summer. “Unless we embark on a comprehensive plan now, including public funding, America will not be able to afford a nationwide, interoperable public safety network.”

Public safety groups, with the backing of some members of Congress, are arguing that they need to be given control of a larger chunk of broadband spectrum — the airwaves on which wireless devices communicate with each other — to insure that they have adequate network capacity during emergencies.

Officials from the F.C.C. and other legislators disagree, saying that the best way to pay for and build a robust, affordable communications system is to auction some of the airwaves to commercial companies that can build a network and make it available to public safety agencies during an emergency.

That disagreement, and the associated Congressional inquiries and lobbying, have stalled development just as wireless phone companies are beginning to construct and deploy their fourth-generation, or 4G, networks.

Building public safety networks at the same time as the commercial wireless networks and sharing towers and fiber optic cables would save $9 billion in construction costs and billions more over the lifetime of the network, the F.C.C. believes.

Some public safety systems are already under way. Last month, the Commerce Department awarded $220 million to five regional efforts to build some of the first wireless broadband public safety systems. Among the awards was $50 million to Motorola to build a network in the San Francisco Bay area that would allow public safety officials from San Francisco, Oakland and surrounding counties to talk, transfer files and share video.

But those initial broadband systems are being built before the various parties have settled on all the appropriate standards for equipment and networks — meaning that there is no guarantee that other jurisdictions that build their systems at some point in the future will be working on the same wavelength.

Because of the specialized nature of much of the equipment, the nation’s 50,000 public safety agencies pay $2,500 to $5,000 a unit for the current generation of rugged, handheld radios that allow different departments to talk to each other. Only mass production of uniform broadband equipment is likely to bring down the costs, officials say.

And while the Obama administration, Congress, the F.C.C. and public safety groups are working to reach agreements on standards, turf battles and political posturing have already crept into the debate.

“The history of public safety is one where the vendors have driven the requirements,” Deputy Chief Charles F. Dowd, who oversees the New York Police Department’s communications division, said in an interview. “We don’t want that situation anymore. We want public safety to do the decision making. And since we’re starting with a clean slate, we can develop rules that  everybody has to play by.”

The Obama administration has already been conducting meetings of a task force that includes representatives of the Department of Homeland Security, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, public safety agencies and telecommunications companies. At the end of September, the administration is to convene a public forum to share ideas.

Administration officials acknowledge that it will take years to build a nationwide public safety system. “We’re talking about an endeavor that will take 10 or so years to get completed,” said an administration official. “We’re starting with a new generation of technology, and that gives us a much better chance to succeed than we had with the legacy systems.”

Complicating the debate is the demand by public safety officials that they control their own networks. At issue is a section of the airwaves created when television stations converted from analog to digital signals, freeing up additional space for other applications. A 10 megahertz band was set aside for public safety to build a wireless broadband network, and Congress instructed the F.C.C. to auction off an additional 10 megahertz that would include a network built to public safety specifications.

That auction, in 2008, failed because it did not attract the minimum bid. The F.C.C. has proposed another auction with less onerous specifications, but it would still produce a commercial system on which public safety would have priority in case of an emergency.

Public safety officials — associations of police departments, fire chiefs and other law enforcement and rescue agencies — oppose that plan, saying that they need all 20 megahertz of spectrum to build a wireless broadband system that is theirs alone.

F.C.C. officials liken that scenario to building a separate highway for the use of police cars and fire trucks, rather than having the public pull over to the side of the road when a fire truck or ambulance needs to pass.

Police and fire officials are difficult constituents to oppose when they combine forces on Capitol Hill, and with the approach of the midterm elections, public safety trade groups have gained considerable support in Congress for their effort to secure the extra spectrum. Competing bipartisan bills have been introduced and will receive hearings beginning this month.

Some Homeland Security officials fear that the debate over broadband is obscuring strides that have been made in linking voice systems, which will continue long into the future to be the dominant method of communication for public safety departments during emergencies. Meanwhile, the window to plan a next-generation broadband system is starting to close.

“There is nothing that is inevitable about having a nationwide, interoperable system,” Mr. Barnett told Congress this summer. “Indeed, the last 75 years of public safety communications teaches us that there are no natural or market forces” that will make it happen.