Project 25 update
Lynnette Luna
Mobile Radio Technology
It always seems to take a major disaster
to highlight the radio incompatibility issues that plight the public-safety
community. The terrorist attacks on
The P25 concept has been around for more
than a decade as an effort to make interoperable gear for police, fire and
other emergency responders on all levels of government. Since 1989, public
safety officials and the mobile radio industry have worked on P25, the
standards-setting process that would facilitate interoperability and allow
public-safety agencies to communicate on wireless devices regardless of the
equipment they use.
The intensity of interoperability
planning efforts grew after the 1995
Today, the industry infighting has faded
away, but new issues have bubbled to the surface. While about 16 states are
actively implementing P25 systems, other states and local governments are
facing a multitude of hurdles.
Finding the money
"The debate five years ago is really
over," said Chuck Jackson, vice president and director of systems
operations with Motorola. "The questions have been answered about
technology and systems have been deployed. Now it's about how we do it and
where does the money come from?"
Movement toward interoperability appears
to be moving smoothly on the federal level. The Federal Emergency Management
Agency's chief information officer has advised that the government's wireless
efforts be consolidated into Project SafeCom to ensure that all emergency
workers have access to interoperable equipment based on the P25 standard. The
Defense Department has adopted a P25 compliance policy for land mobile radio
systems as have a number of federal agencies, most recently the National Fire
Association.
Secretary of
"We are competing for money at a time
when schools don't even have enough money," said Dan Bart, senior vice
president of standards and special projects with the Telecommunications
Industry Association. "There are critical decisions being made at the
state and local level as to where the next dollar goes."
Dennis Blaine, executive vice president
of sales and marketing with E.F. Johnson, said several state contracts for
P25-complaint radios E.F. Johnson was expecting in 2003 have been frozen
because of budget constraints.
"It affects virtually every state,
and it trickles down to every county," he said. "But we'll see more
from the
Even when local and state governments
scrape up the funds to purchase P25-compliant, they are often stymied by lack
of frequencies to upgrade. The 800 MHz, VHF and UHF bands are crowded in many
major metropolitan areas.
Waiting for spectrum
Public-safety entities are still waiting
for additional spectrum previously assigned by the FCC in the 700 MHz band. But
that spectrum is occupied primarily by television broadcasters that aren't
required to return the spectrum until 2006 or when 85 percent of American
households can receive digital television signals. The move isn't likely to
happen by 2006 due to problems transitioning to digital TV.
"Here we are years later and
spectrum is still not available,"
During his recent testimony before the
U.S. House of Representatives Sub-committee on Telecommunications and the
Internet, Vincent Stile, president of the Association of Public-Safety
Communications Officials (APCO), urged Congress to establish
"That will give state and local
governments the ability to proceed with new interoperable, state-of-the-art
public safety radio systems to provide new capabilities and/or allow for
expansion of overburdened systems operating in the adjacent 800 MHz band,"
said Stile.
Across the bands
To ease the spectrum constraints and spur
faster interoperability, Motorola and E.F. Johnson, which has
publicly announced its intention to enter into the P25 infrastructure game next
year, are working on equipment that will communicate across 800 MHz, VHF and
UHF bands, creating an interoperable network. Motorola is planning
demonstrations of the capability with the federal government.
"We will have an open architecture
so we will be able to have different radio types communicating with each
other," said E.F. Johnson's
Giving up control
State and local governments themselves
can also share the blame for the lack of interoperable systems. In February,
the National Task Force on Interoperability (NTFI) released a 104-page report
that detailed why public-safety agencies are facing interoperability problems.
One of the top five reasons cited was lack of coordination and cooperation in
state and local governments.
"State and locals have the attitude
that 'what's mine is mine.' They want their own systems," said Bart.
"There's not just one thing holding back P25. It's the will to cooperate,
the politics, available spectrum and money."
NTFI highlighted the fact that agencies
are naturally reluctant to give up management and control of their
communications systems. It suggests that public officials can consider sharing
costs and benefits with other jurisdictions or look at sharing infrastructure
such as radio towers.
For instance, the Capital Wireless
Integrated Network (CapWIN) is a multi-state, multi-jurisdictional wireless
public safety system. Communities serving Washington, D.C., Virginia and
Maryland are working together to develop an Integrated Mobile Wireless Public
Safety and Transportation Network that will allow public-safety and
transportation officials from more than 40 local, state and federal agencies to
communicate among each other in real time.
The bottom line, said NTFI, is that
public-safety agencies must change they way they do business, which means
sometimes giving up control of their communications systems.
Meanwhile, those pushing for more rapid
rollouts of P25 networks hope it doesn't take another major disaster to
highlight these deployment hurdles.
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