Whether or not you’re directly involved in public safety communications, you may have heard the following terms and phrases around the digital water cooler: Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1), text to 9-1-1 and Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN) and FirstNet. These are some of the national projects driving technological development in public safety communications. And every police officer, from the rookie to the chief, needs to be aware that their job will be affected by the coming changes.
Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network
Want to see live video of a fleeing suspect from the cell phone camera of a bystander? The NPSBN will allow you to do so. The NPSBN is a network conceived to relay video and data from 9-1-1 callers to the communications center to emergency responders in the field, among other things. Congress set aside spectrum in the 700 MHz band for the purpose. Equipment manufactured to operate on the system will be built on the LTE (Long-Term Evolution) standard. FirstNet (the First Responder Network Authority) was created by Congress to oversee the buildout and implementation of the network.
For the network to succeed, it must be ubiquitous, reliable, redundant and interoperable, it must and lower costs.
“FirstNet was created by Congress to serve you,” said F. Craig Farrill, a wireless telecommunications executive and FirstNet Board member, to attendees of the APCO International Emerging Technology Forum on Jan. 31. “We’re here to serve you, the people who put your lives on the line to save lives and property.”
The scope of the FirstNet mission is breathtaking, and the result will be the fifth or sixth largest wireless communications network in the country. FirstNet recognizes that, “The network needs to be more reliable than commercial networks—a reliability you can bet your life on,” said Farrill.
The legislation also established initial funding for the network, and grants will be established through the NTIA.
NG9-1-1
According to Kathy McMahon, director of public safety for Agero, “NG9-1-1 is really just a subset of IP-based emergency communications.” “9-1-1 calls are only one part of the public safety ecosystem,” she says. “NG9-1-1 is much, much more than 9-1-1.”
To get set up on NG9-1-1, you have to have a network. Some questions that may help you get started: Does your state operate a secure IP network that could be used for emergency services or delivery of 9-1-1 calls? Have you assessed requirements for bandwidth to ensure that the current network will handle future traffic? How will it be managed?
Some people see NG9-1-1 as an interoperability utopia, says McMahon. “As you’re planning for your interoperability utopia, you have to have on your radar how your neighbors train their personnel. … Standardized training is going to be critical as you move forward with next gen. If you haven’t started on the same page, there are going to be a lot of challenges.”
Among those challenges, what to do with all that additional data you’ll have access to. “Medical history is not important when you’re taking a robbery call,” says McMahon. “For every assumption we make on how we think information should be used, without oversight or some sort of quality assurance process, we won’t know if we’ve made good decisions.”
Text to 9-1-1
According to Seth Sonenthal, product manager for TeleCommunication Systems (TCS) Inc., there were 13,433 public attempts to text 9-1-1 from October to the end of December 2012 on one carrier. “Public demand is there,” says Sonenthal. “The public does want this.”
The path to text to 9-1-1 has been established, and the top four U.S. carriers (i.e., AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA and Verizon) have agreed to quarterly self-report on their progress. The carriers will provide standardized bounce-back messages to text-to-9-1-1 messages by June 30, 2013. General service will be available by May 15, 2014. And the carriers will have a six-month go-live triggered by a readiness letter from the 9-1-1 communications center.
Keri Losavio is the editor of Public Safety Communications, the official magazine of the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) International. She has been writing for and editing public safety publications for more than 15 years.
