Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Re: Nextel convinces majority of FCC to accept key points of Scam Plan

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 08 Apr 2004 16:32:40 -0400

Jim,

Public Safety and iDEN

Parts of Canada do use a commercially available iDEN network by Telus
called MIKE
(http://www.telusmobility.com/about/press_room/iden_network.shtml).
Durham Regional Police Service has deployed iDEN (Telus calls it MIKE)
as its primary system according to this 2002 presentation by Bob
Simmonds, Executive Vice President, Regulatory TELUS Mobility
(http://www.itu.int/ITU-R/study-groups/rsg8/rwp8a/seminars/protection/presentations/2-4_simmonds.pdf).

As for further deployments I would need to investigate further.

Commercial Networks For Primary Public Safety Communications - A Recipe
for Disaster

Canada and others ARE making a BIG mistake by employing commercial
networks (CMRS) as a PRIMARY system. Myself and other Land Mobile Radio
Engineers have all agreed that commercial networks should only be used
as a secondary system. The vulnerabilities of commercial networks are to
great to risk the public's safety. The perfect example is the North East
Blackout of 2003. Every commercial wireless network was affected by the
blackout. Public Safety networks were only slightly effected. I will
look into the Canadian policy.

VZ and EV-DO

VZ's EV-DO is being used widely  by many police departments for data
only. All the departments still have voice networks. EV-DO is being used
to support Mobile Data Terminals (MDT) for records checks, driver info
and some dispatching.
IF the MDT goes down all operations can be conducted over voice
networks.

VZ's network is good but not 100% reliable (no network is). VZ controls
the traffic and coverage of the network. If public safety were to use
the network as a primary means of communication and a failure were to
occur it would be out of the control of local law enforcement. An system
outage could last from minutes to hours and law enforcement would be
help less. Coverage is not always where the police need it. Adding a
cellsite to suit the needs a one user is a monumental task and does not
happen often, so departments must deal with the coverage the carrier
offers.

In an emergency a Public Safety system administrator can quickly off
load (bump, cutoff) non-essential users to provided capacity for
essential users. Some carriers have tossed around "Priority Access" as a
way to provide officials immediate communications. Priority Access DOES
NOT off load users like Public Safety network administrators can it just
moves the official to the "Front Of The Line". The official must still
wait for an available channel. (for more detailed info I suggest you
contact Alan Dixon  at [email-masked]).

As a general rule public safety networks are built to a much more
rigorous standard than commercial networks. A good public safety network
has layers upon layers of redundancy while many commercial networks have
little or  none. Public Safety networks usually have one or two
individuals at the local level (not hundreds of miles away at a
switching center) who are in control and can react in minutes (Not
hours) of a failure.

Right now EV-DO is fast however there are many other technologies
knocking at the door. Flarion's OFMD
( http://www.flarion.com/ )  is blazzzzing fast and is on fire right now
and will soon become the leader when Nextel decides to deploy it. With
speeds that rival EV-DO or better Flarion has a good shot at being the
leader in mobile data.

EV-DO is not cheap to deploy ($$$) or operate (bandwidth hungry).
Pricing to public safety is higher (approx. $50-80 per month) than its
CDPD predecessor and many time more expensive than running data on their
own network. Running data on a public safety network has NO reoccurring
charges.

The draw back on running data on a public safety network is speed. Some
networks can run a 43.2 kbps (See Data Radio
http://www.dataradio.com/2_1_3.html) or slightly higher (depending on
bandwidth available) but they will never catch CMRS. That is why many
departments have turned to commercial networks. Now you see why I said:
"public safety would be better served by INCORPORATING commercially
available technologies INTO THEIR  public safety systems." Doing this
will give them the best of both worlds 1)  Reliability 2) Control. 3)
Speed

VZ imporvement?? Yes on paper but without 1)  Reliability 2) Control
it's not ready for prime time for public safety.

Interoperabilty- an over used Buzz Word.

There is NO interoperabilty among CMRS (unless you count SMS). Many
departments achieve interoperability in various ways.

1) Sharing of trunked radio ID's  and system keys- This allows both
departments to speak to each other even if they have separate systems
however the technologies must be a like (i.e. Motorola, Smart Zone
800Mhz, MA/COM Open Sky, 800 Mhz, etc).

2) Interconnecting Devices - Joins two or more systems regardless of
technology (i.e. JPS ACU-1000
http://homeland.cs.umaine.edu/IBET-JPS.pdf )

3) Common radio channels - designed for specifically for
interoperability. There are assigned channels on almost every band used
by public safety for interoperable communications. The problem is most
departments do not use them and therefore are not programmed into their
radios. Again the draw back here is they must be on the same band.
(800mhz, VHF, UHF)

Marcel

P.S. - I admire your Foundations work on Spectrum
Issues.............keep it up.

Jim Snider wrote:

>  Marcel--Someone told me after the panel that in Canada the plan is to
> use commercial wireless carriers for public safety, not as a
> supplement to public safety networks but as the primary public safety
> network.  Are you familier with those plans?  Is that correct
> information?  If so, is Canada making a mistake or are the public
> safety needs in the U.S. fundamentally different?  Any enlightenment
> you can provide me on the Canadian policy would be greatly
> appreciated.  I'd also be curious to know what today's public safety
> networks can do that Verizon's EV-DO network cannot.  In terms of
> speed, cost, coverage, interoperability, and perhaps even reliability,
> the Verizon network on paper seems to be an improvement on the typical
> public safety network in existence today.--Jim J.H. Snider, Senior
> Research Fellow
> New America Foundation
> 1630 Connecticut Ave., NW
> Washington, DC 20009
> Phone: 202/986-2700
> Fax: 202/986-3696
> Web: www.newamerica.net
> E-mail: [email-masked]
>
>      -----Original Message-----
>      From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]
>
>      Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2004 2:31 PM
>      To: Jim Snider; WFHSG; [email-masked]
>      Subject: Re: Nextel convinces majority of FCC to accept key
>      points of Scam Plan
>
>      J.H.,
>
>       You should have said:
>
>      "public safety would be better served by INCORPORATING
>      commercially
>      available technologies INTO THEIR  public-safety systems."
>
>      Public Safety still needs to be the driver on this bus but
>      they MUST catch-up on new technologies and deployment
>      methodologies. It is taking years for Public Safety to agree
>      P-25 Phase II. Since the time this idea was floated the
>      telecom industry has gone through two generations.
>
>      Marcel
>
>      [email-masked] wrote:
>
>
>
>     > The FCC has said its main goal in the 800 MHz proceeding
>     > is to help public safety, but J.H. Snider, New America
>     > senior research fellow, argued that public safety would be
>     > better served by using commercially
>     > available technologies rather than proprietary
>     > public-safety systems.
>     > http://rcrnews.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?newsId=17630
>     > --
>
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