by ECC Editor | Aug 27, 2020 | Articles, Comm Center News
Sixteen states enacted 22 bills in 2018 aimed at supporting and improving the efficiency of the 911 component of public emergency communication services operations.
Although fewer states passed legislation pertaining to Next Generation 911 (NG911) in 2018 than in past years, at least four states—Colorado, Iowa, Maryland and Virginia—passed NG911-related legislation. NG911 is an internet protocol (IP)-based system that allows users to send digital information such as photos, text messages or videos, in addition to phone calls, to 911 call centers and reroute 911 calls among 911 call centers. A total of 20 states have adopted a statewide NG911 plan and 22 reported being in the installation and testing phase of NG911 component implementation, according to the 2017 National 911 Progress Report… READ MORE
by ECC Editor | Aug 27, 2020 | Articles, Comm Center News
Axon yesterday launched Respond, a cloud-based, real-time operations platform that marks the company’s entry into the computer-aided-dispatch (CAD) arena and is designed to help agencies leverage information from a various connected devices to enhance response efforts, according to a company official.
“We stepped back and said, ‘We want to do this right.’ We don’t want to get into this space just to replicate what has existed before,” Josh Pepper, Axon’s vice president of product management, said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications… READ MORE
by AllThingsECC.com | Aug 27, 2020 | Articles, Comm Center News
A new advocacy group is calling for additional spectrum to be assigned to the FirstNet Authority for exclusive use public safety, saying that the spectrum could eventually help support public safety use of 5G.
In a discussion as part of this week’s IWCE Virtual event, Sue Swenson — a former board member and board chair of the FirstNet Authority, and now founder of the Public Safety Spectrum Alliance (PSSA) — said that 50 megahertz of spectrum at 4.9 GHz, which is already designated for public safety use, should be assigned to the FirstNet Authority to develop a spectrum plan and reserve a portion of the band for public safety 5G…
by AllThingsECC.com | Aug 27, 2020 | Articles, Comm Center News
Zello, the leading provider of push-to-talk, live voice technology that connects 150 million users globally, today unveils a set of new features to address the communication and collaboration needs of transportation teams. Modeled after walkie talkies, Zello’s push-to-talk app runs alongside dispatch software on both desktop and mobile, so transportation teams can communicate with the push of a button, connecting drivers directly to the first available dispatcher, without crowding channels with chatter from other conversations…
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 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…
