DRONES, FIRSTNET DATA INTEROPERABILITY, COMPUTER-AIDEDDISPATCH, MUNI-WI-FI AGAIN? By Andrew Seybold A number of significant issues have arisen in the past year that are raising concerns for industry connectivity and interoperability among first responders. This article touches on a few of these.
DRONES—UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES (UAVS) Concern is growing within the public-safety ranks about citizens flying drones over incidents that call for first responders. When incidents involve wildfires, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) usually declares no-fly zones up to 5,000 feet above the fires. I am told some drones can receive no-fly zone alerts and they will not fly into no-fly areas. Unfortunately, more common, less expensive drones do not have that capability. When a drone is reported in the area of an incident, planes and helicopters (helos) are grounded and cannot assist when needed during wildfires and under certain other circumstances. Because of this, many within the public-safety community are calling for the FAA and potentially the FCC to permit public-safety personnel to disable drones flown by citizens or reporters and to recommend ways to do so. It is reckless for people to continue to fly drones into areas where public safety must be able to monitor the safety of equipment and personnel assisting them from above. There are hefty fines for violating FAA rules but first, someone has to find the person flying the drone and he/she must be arrested. Perhaps some of our military’s methods for disabling drones would be appropriate for public-safety use. Of course, there are some issues with using RF jammers and the wireless community is very familiar with these since it has encountered jammers when some prisons and even schools have ignored FCC rules and jammed radio systems to prevent unauthorized cell-phone use. It is illegal to use most jammers, and all jammers intentionally spew out interference that impacts WiFi, cellular, and public-safety radio traffic. There must be a better way to disable drones.
INTEROPERABILITY ON THE FIRSTNET NETWORK The idea behind FirstNet was to empower the publicsafety community with a nationwide, broadband network capable of providing interoperability between public-
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safety agencies regardless of where they are and among all agencies reporting to an incident. When the FirstNet Authority was formed in 2012, work began to turn the vision into a reality. While the contract for a private partner to build out, operate, and maintain the network was not awarded until early in 2017, today, the contractor (AT&T) is ahead of the five-year buildout requirements on all counts. Now we have a true nationwide broadband network that is being used by more than 17,000 public-safety agencies and more than 2.2 million users. The network portion of the vision has come together better and faster than most within the public-safety community and vendors thought possible. Both the FirstNet Authority and FirstNet (Built with AT&T) have shown time and time again that they are intent on providing the interoperable network public safety has been without for far too many years. While there may be more to be done and more sites to be built, they have delivered it and it is called “FirstNet.” In the meantime, AT&T is opening up its 5G spectrum to FirstNet publicsafety users. However, the “smart broadband network” is not yet providing the extent of nationwide interoperability promised.
FIRSTNET DATA INTEROPERABILITY There continues to be a lack of interoperability between the various forms of data that flow throughout the FirstNet smart network. It is clear that the FirstNet Authority oversees the network and the contractor (AT&T). What is not clear is who should be responsible for driving interoperability for data services including Push-To-Talk (PTT), data, video, and applications. Frankly, I believe it will be much more difficult to provide common-data solutions than it was to build the network.
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