by AllThingsECC.com | Aug 27, 2020 | Articles, Comm Center News
BFN (Before FirstNet) and before Next-Generation 9-1-1 (NG911), the public-safety communications world was fairly organized. A few companies offered complete systems consisting of base stations, mobiles and portables, and radio consoles. Along with their approved suppliers, they could provide antennas, coax cable, towers, generators, and other elements needed to ensure their systems were built and operated as promised.
Other vendors could and did bid on pieces and parts of systems, and many were successful in convincing some public-safety agencies to break out mobiles, portables, and sometimes base stations from system-level bids. Some Land Mobile Radio (LMR) vendors added features and functions over and above what was included in, for example, P25 standards, so competitors could not meet the same specifications with their products. Thus in the early days, the LMR vendor world was divided into system suppliers and device suppliers…
by AllThingsECC.com | Aug 27, 2020 | Comm Center News
City of Odessa Public Safety communications dispatchers work four days on, four days off and 12-hour shifts. They take calls and dispatch the appropriate first responders to those in need.
Inside their office is a light blue tile floor leading to multiple monitors and call-taking stations. The television is on and the volume is low. The dispatcher’s voices are calm regardless of what or who is on the other end…
by AllThingsECC.com | Aug 25, 2020 | Comm Center News
The FCC has denied petitions filed by the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) and the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials International, Inc. (APCO) to stay the application of the rules adopted in the Commission’s 6 GHz Order (Vol. XVII, Issue 17). EEI is concerned that unlicensed operations in the band without the use of an automated frequency coordination system would result in harmful interference. The band is heavily utilized by utilities for microwave backhaul and other internal critical communications operations. In response, the Commission pointed to its extensive record in this proceeding, which included numerous technical studies submitted over almost three years…
by AllThingsECC.com | Aug 25, 2020 | Comm Center News
Two recently approved 255-foot-tall cell phone towers are expected to help improve cell phone service in the north part of Okaloosa County.
One of the towers will stand near the 6800 block of State Road 189 in the “Nubbin Ridge” area north of Baker. The lease area for this tower consists of 10,000 square feet, on an agricultural parcel that covers about 80 acres…
by AllThingsECC.com | Aug 25, 2020 | Articles, Comm Center News
The future of public safety communications is inextricably linked to LTE and cellular technologies, according to Jeff Johnson, CEO of the Western Fire Chiefs Association — and those who keep asking, “When will Land Mobile Radio die?” are focused on the wrong question.
“People are always asking me, when will LMR die? Frankly, I think it’s an irrelevant question. I think it’s the wrong question,” Johnson said in an address at this week’s IWCE Virtual event. “I think the right question is, how will LTE change the current landscape for public safety responders? And to me, there’s no magic here. It is about coverage, it’s about backhaul, it’s about reliability, it’s about devices, it’s about security and it’s about functionality and feature sets — of all those combined things. And the fact is, all can be achieved through LTE…
