by AllThingsECC.com | Jul 11, 2018 | Articles, Comm Center News
By Dean Prochaska, Director of Standards, First Responder Network Authority
This blog post is part of the “Tech Talk” series focused on the FirstNet Authority’s standards development activities to support the public safety community needs. This post recaps discussions linked to public safety and other related topics from the 3GPP Plenary meetings that were conducted from June 11-15, 2018 in La Jolla, CA. The First Responder Network Authority (“FirstNet Authority”) represented public safety interests at the plenary meetings.
In the FirstNet Authority’s ongoing effort to keep you informed regarding standards development activities impacting public safety, and following our recent update on the March Plenary meetings in Chennai, India, this blog discusses the latest developments from the 3GPP Plenary meetings held in La Jolla, CA, from June 11-15, 2018. The June quarterly meetings addressed standards in several areas relevant to the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN) in three separate plenary group meetings.
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by AllThingsECC.com | Jun 21, 2018 | Articles, Comm Center News
NPSTC Supports FirstNet as THE Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network
NPSTC NPSBN POSITION STATEMENT
The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC) strongly supports Public Law 112-96 (02/22/12) that sets forth the requirements for having one Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN). THE NPSBN is what public safety advocated for from the beginning of discussions within the community, starting around 2006, and what Congress mandated–a single nationwide network.
NPSTC developed a public safety statement of requirements document in 2007 and a high-level broadband requirements document in 2012. Since then, NPSTC has developed many specific requirements documents to support the broadband for public safety implementation process, which were all approved by NPSTC’s 16 public safety member organizations.
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by AllThingsECC.com | Jun 16, 2018 | Comm Center News
Recent Webinar, Working Together to Connect and Protect, was hosted by NENA and sponsored by AT&T.
By ATFN Staff Writer
Before the National Emergency Number Association Conference (NENA) kicked off this week, the organization hosted a webinar last Wednesday titled, Working Together to Connect and Protect, that was hosted by NENA and sponsored by AT&T. AT&T described its Emergency Services IP Network (ESInet) product and how Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) can transition from a Legacy Time Divisional Multiplexing (TDM) system and fully harness the power and promise of Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG911).
Mark Titus, AT&T ESInet Lead Product Manager, illustrated the changing landscape of incoming calls to PSAPs and the growing need for PSAPs to keep pace with consumer technology demand. He noted that 240 million calls are made to 911 in the U.S. each year and that 80 percent of these calls originate from mobile devices. “The demands for 911 service have changed drastically in the last 50 years,” Titus said. He envisions NG911, in which a call for distress is not only collected and processed using advanced IP-based technology, but also rich and robust data can be more efficiently and smartly shared with the appropriate agents in the field, allowing public safety to take advantage of expanded situational awareness. He also envisions AT&T’s history for working with first responders as the right solution. Mark also stated, “Not only does ESInet have the ability to provide fast call transfers, but also allows sharing of information between PSAPs. This pre-built national architecture can be used to accelerate PSAP adoption and greatly reduce implementation time frames.”
Representatives from the AT&T FirstNet Program Strategy and Policy Team discussed how FirstNet interconnects with NG911 systems. Ryan Burchnell, Director of Strategy and Policy, discussed how the FirstNet Private Mobile Connection service can be used to establish a formal interconnection between an NG911 system and the FirstNet network. As PSAPs transition from Legacy TDM systems, he suggested they won’t just receive calls in the future but also text messages (as some already are) and images, video, and other multimedia from the public. “All that information has to be gathered by the dispatcher and telecommunicator so they can transmit that information to first responders in the field,” Burchnell said. Burchnell also described inter-agency collaboration with FirstNet and how Sheriffs, Fire Departments, and other Public Safety Entities (PSEs) can use the FirstNet Private Mobile Connection to extend their network to first responders in the field.
Carrie Johnson, Director of Strategy and Policy, talked about how the FirstNet Applications Ecosystem can serve as another platform for PSEs to securely share information with first responders and other public safety jurisdictions. AT&T launched the FirstNet Applications Ecosystem and an Application Developer Program. Johnson said the Ecosystem provides a foundation for PSAPs to securely share and transfer information with first responders in the field. Johnson said, “One example could be a sensor in a holster. Anytime an officer draws his or her weapon an alert could be sent to dispatch letting dispatch know the officer is in trouble and needs backup. These new capabilities can ride on this network.”
The NENA Conference is this week in Nashville. AT&T will have a booth at the NENA Conference with theater presentations on ESInet and FirstNet on Monday, June 18 and Tuesday, June 19.
by AllThingsECC.com | Jun 8, 2018 | Articles, Comm Center News
Remarks by Sue Swenson, FirstNet Chair
Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) Program Public Safety Broadband Stakeholder Meeting, San Diego, CA, June 5, 2018
Good morning everyone and welcome to America’s Finest City and the 2018 PSCR Conference.
We have spent so many years talking about what seemed to be the elusive nationwide public safety broadband network. It is thrilling this year that FirstNet is finally here and first responders are using its capability with great satisfaction.
I am so pleased to see what is happening in the world for first responders. The reality of a nationwide public safety broadband network has created a marketplace to develop solutions that will help save lives and make the work of public safety more efficient.
And we’re going to hear a lot about those solutions this week. By now you can see that this going to be a week full of great information on several areas of technology that can ultimately take advantage of the FirstNet broadband network. We’re going to hear a lot in key areas of interest:
- Public Safety Mission Critical Voice
- Location Based Services
- LMR to LTE
- Public Safety Analytics
- User Interface/User Experience
- Resilient systems and
- Security
And these solutions are focused on what has become the 5th network in the United States. Public safety now truly has its very own network with FirstNet!
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by AllThingsECC.com | May 27, 2018 | Comm Center News
ROSWELL, Ga. — High school students hiding from the gunman in Parkland, Florida, were forced to whisper in calls to 911 for fear of tipping off their location. Others texted friends and family who then relayed information to emergency dispatchers over the phone.
A few months later, a woman in Michigan was able to send off short text messages to 911 dispatchers as her homicidal husband held their daughter hostage. She was able to convey enough information to help officers get to the scene and formulate a plan to stop the man without the family being harmed.
SOURCE: Post-Gazette
DATE: May 17, 2018
The two cases show how that in this era of active shooters, police shootings and global terrorism, a patchwork of technology around the country can make the experience of calling 911 vastly different depending on where you live. More cities have begun to accept text messages recently, but the system that Americans rely on during their most vulnerable moments still hinges largely on landline telephones, exposing a weak link that jeopardizes the ability of law enforcement to respond in an emergency.
[su_button url=”http://www.post-gazette.com/news/nation/2018/05/17/Emergency-911-technology-struggles-to-keep-up-with-the-times/stories/201805020294″ target=”blank” background=”#005a8c” radius=”0″]READ FULL ARTICLE[/su_button]
by AllThingsECC.com | May 20, 2018 | Comm Center News
By Christopher Vondracek
Steven Raucher, or “Steve from the Future,” as he has been known to refer to himself, is the co-founder of RapidDeploy, and a man determined to make a difference in public safety communications.
RapidDeploy recently launched a video proclaiming a second extinction was coming for public safety – spelling extinction for legacy public safety software and suggesting major changes in the communications industry. Evolution to the cloud is the clear message. “The existing solutions in American public safety are built on technologies which are outdated and do not leverage the power of the cloud,” Raucher said
Raucher, a 20-year veteran of the finance and IT sector, became a first responder in 2015 and gained firsthand experience of the challenges first responders face during a call for service. His RapidDeploy co-founder, Brett Meyerowitz, a volunteer paramedic, formerly with Intel and the former CTO of one of the largest online gaming sites in the world, had “never even heard of Computer-Aided-Dispatch (CAD),” when he set out to write a system built by first responders for first responders.” It is worth noting that Brett also built the first cloud-based retail bank in Africa.
With Brett and Steven’s background in technology, they saw the burden many agencies face, especially in rural locations, where response times to 9-1-1 calls are slower and costs can quickly escalate. Rather than running critical communications systems on disconnected on-premise legacy infrastructure, the RapidDeploy CAD provides reliability, speed, and reduced cost of ownership to agencies, all within a web-based and cloud-based dispatch system.
RapidDeploy recently had a successful test run in America. At a stadium-sized event, with over 30,000 attendees, Raucher’s team was field-testing when they lost all cell connectivity due to a network overwhelmed by fans uploading videos, sending pictures, and connecting with social media. In the event of an emergency, such loss of service could be disastrous.
“All cell connectivity was lost,” Raucher said. “We were accessing the RapidDeploy CAD over a satellite link, and it became unresponsive.” However, one responding officer was running his iPhone on FirstNet, and he was able to tether to his laptop and the cloud and access the RapidDeploy CAD over the FirstNet network. “Our CAD sparked right up,” Raucher said. “We were running live in the field, in the middle of this enormous crowd, with zero latency. It was fantastic.”
The mission of RapidDeploy, according to the co-founder, is to “reduce response times for all and improve first responders’ safety by increasing situational awareness.” A cloud-based solution can also better integrate everything from mapping, weather, traffic, IoT sensor data and other mission-critical data sources.
And while it was successful with a mass gathering, RapidDeploy also aids rural districts. Raucher notes that roughly 75 percent of 9-1-1 PSAPs (Public Safety Answering Points) in America are comprised of five or fewer call-taking and dispatch positions. Being smaller facilities means they cannot afford to run the traditional legacy systems that require racks of servers and dedicated IT support. That leaves these agencies in the unfortunate position of running second tier, or sometimes no software at all, to manage their dispatch of emergency services.
“The cloud can democratize public safety whereby small agencies can now run their entire operations using a world class software solution that historically was only accessible to larger agencies.”
Raucher sees FirstNet as a unique opportunity in the world of public safety. “This is the first time we have run our CAD on a hardened Public Safety Broadband Network (PSBN) designed purely for first responders,” Raucher said. “What FirstNet is doing is really remarkable.” And in what Raucher’s video calls the “Second Extinction” of the status quo in delivering better public safety communication, he sees FirstNet and other partners willing to innovate within the industry as the “survivors,” the rest ending up on the museum floor.
[su_button url=”https://rapiddeploy.com/secondextinction/” target=”blank” background=”#005a8c” radius=”0″]WATCH VIDEO[/su_button]
Christopher is a freelance journalist living in Washington D.C., most recently with Courthouse News.
