Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Wireless networking the focus of public safety communication

From: Marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 03 Apr 2004 18:29:10 -0500

Wireless networking the focus of public safety communication

03/24/04

By Trudy Walsh
GCN Staff

Wired networking, Einstein said, "is a kind of very, very long cat.
You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. .

And radio operates exactly the same way: You send signals here,
they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

Einstein's catless network is rapidly becoming the top cat in public
safety communications, according to local government speakers at
a session on wireless networking at FOSE's E-Town.

Montgomery County, Md., government has 44 dedicated 802.11b
wireless hot spots to public safety mobile users, said Barbara Garrard,
chief of enterprise infrastructure for Montgomery County's Technology
Services Department.

At times, the WiFi connection was the most cost-effective kind of
connectivity available, Garrard said. In some cases, to connect a
building to the county's fiber-optic network from across the street
would have been prohibitively expensive. "You would have had to
dig an underground cable, and it would have cost a fortune," Garrard
said.

Always be on the lookout for rogue access points to wireless networks,
Garrard said. "If you don't implement a wireless network, someone else
in your organization will, but without centrally managed security."

Joe Ross, wireless programs director for the District of Columbia's
Office
of the Chief Technology Officer, talked about the importance of a
dedicated
public safety spectrum. The District is part of a growing coalition of
state
and
local governments that is asking Congress and the Federal Communications
Commission to allocate at an additional 10 MHz of spectrum in the 700
MHz
band for public safety use. Public safety needs the additional 10 MHz
for
wide-area mobile applications such as video and geographic information
system data.

The events of Sept. 11 showed the importance of a cohesive public safety
communication network, Ross said. Even in an ice storm, if the lines
come
down, public safety organizations still need to communicate.

 http://gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/25401-1.html

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