By Lori Stone, Region III Lead
When it comes to emergency communications in the National Capital Region, Dave Mulholland has seen it all. Originally a member of the U.S. Park Police, Mulholland later took on the role of Statewide Communications Interoperability Coordinator (SWIC) for the District of Columbia where, among other duties, he helped plan and manage emergency communications for large-scale events in the nation’s capital. Today, he serves as the Administrator for the Arlington County (Va.) Emergency Communications Center, which supports more than 225,000 residents and handles upwards of 440,000 calls every year. Public Safety Advocacy Director Dave Buchanan recently sat down with him to discuss his experiences with public safety communications in the National Capital Region for the Public Safety First podcast.
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By John Hunt, Senior Public Safety Advisor
The First Responder Network Authority’s (FirstNet Authority) Public Safety Advocacy team traveled recently to Traverse City, MI, to participate in and present to more than 230 attendees at the 2019 Michigan Statewide Interoperable Communications Training Conference. The conference gave both the FirstNet Authority and the State of Michigan an opportunity to work to improve communications, interoperability, and information sharing among public safety agencies in and around the State.
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By Ken Bednasz, VP Application Engineering at Telit, Americas.
SOURCE: IoTforall.com
DATE: February 18, 2019
The implementation of the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet)—the first nationwide high-speed broadband network for America’s first responders—has opened up a whole new range of opportunities for technology to assist in their mission-critical work. FirstNet is built on an LTE network. It’s the flexibility, coverage and bandwidth of LTE and the reliability and resilience built into FirstNet that are catalyzing the emergence of applications, helping to enable new ways of working for the public safety community. FirstNet is built with AT&T in public-private partnership with the First Responder Network Authority.
A key example of the power and importance of FirstNet is the increasing use of real-time surveillance and data gathering by drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The benefits of drones are slowly being realized, and they’re being deployed in a growing number of agencies to enhance productivity and to increase safety and security. 
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