AICC Report

AICC REPORT >> Protecting Your Internal Communications

It doesn’t have to break the bank.

By Lou Fiore, Chairman, AICC

I want to begin by saying we mourn the passing of Robert Bitton, our TMA Frequency Coordinator, a TMA/ CSAA past president and my friend. Bob spent a good deal of his own time working on behalf of the industry, TMA members, and non-TMA members alike, safeguarding our use of the frequency allocation won by our colleagues generations ago on behalf of the alarm industry. He will be missed.

In this issue of the TMA Dispatch, let’s look at an old topic in a new light. Since 1969, listed alarm companies have enjoyed the exclusive use of a portion of the 450 to 470 MHz business band for alarm usage, both voice and data. In recent years, voice usage on these frequencies has fallen off dramatically because of the transition to commercial cellular networks. In recent weeks, with a very large portion of the US workforce working at home, use of the Internet

and commercial cellular have been overloaded. With people going online to a much greater extent in the pandemic, Internet traffic has exploded. That is taking a toll on our download speeds and video quality. Besides increased cellular traffic, one alternative is to use the hotspot feature on many smart phones, further stressing the cellular networks.

We have written about the promise of FirstNet for alarm transmission from monitored premises to a listed central station. While FirstNet will be useful for alarm traffic, its use for voice or broadband traffic such as video is reserved for first responders. This leaves us to use the commercial cellular networks to communicate with employees. But the use of cellular for voice traffic proves problematic in times of national or regional emergency. This has been shown the case during 9-11 and with the current pandemic. A reliable, totally independent alternative is within your grasp should you wish to go that way.

While these frequencies have been coveted by other industries, seeking to use them for trunked radio systems. TMA still retains the ability to coordinate a certain group of frequencies between 460 and 466 MHz. But we no longer have exclusive use. We must now share these frequencies with others on a non-interfering basis.

The coordination process will yield an FCC license for a company to operate on these frequencies. After licensing, there is then a one-year construction requirement to build out a system. In this frequency band are numerous channels that can be licensed. The low power channels between the high power channels (the so-called “offsets”) are typically used for alarm data transmission by systems such as AESIntellinet. But the high power channels, spaced 5 MHz apart for repeater use, are there to be used for voice as well as data.

These voice channels have been used for decades by central station companies wishing to communicate with its field personnel such as sales, installers, service, runners, guards, etc. Slowly, over the years, this function has been replaced by the use of cellular telephones. Our lack of use of these voice channels have been noted by others and an appeal to the FCC by other coordinators left us in the current situation of having to share these frequencies.

With recent episodes showing the vulnerability of the cellular networks,