Interoperability & Emergency Communications News Clips March 5, 2010 – March 19, 2010

Rural Agencies Adopt Digital Communications ...... 2 FCC releases national broadband plan...... 3 Tuesday Morning Federal Newscast...... 4 Congressional E911 Group Targets Upgrade in Nation's 9-1-1 Call Center Technology.. 4 Emergency communications plan update will blend old and new...... 6 and Five Leading Emergency Communications Equipment Manufacturers Demonstrate ISSI Interoperability...... 7 Oregon seeks FCC waiver to build out broadband network...... 8 Harris makes multiband announcements for portable, mobile radios...... 9 Panel: Broadband Voice for Public Safety is Inevitable...... 10 Daniels, Telex debut P25 radio-dispatch interface ...... 12 Harris unveils new products, P25 contract ...... 13 Legislation Introduced to Advance E911 ...... 14 A phased approach to improve radio communications...... 15 Fed Emergency Communications Center Struggling ...... 20

1 Rural Agencies Adopt Digital Communications February 17, 2010 MissionCritical Communications By Sandra Wendelken URL: http://www.radioresourcemag.com/onlyonline.cfm?OnlyOnlineID=154

During a period of just more than two months, five counties or cities in Georgia and Kentucky selected NEXEDGE technology from Kenwood Communications for their public-safety communications networks. The agencies have several things in common, including a need to be cost conscious and comply with the FCC’s VHF and UHF narrowbanding mandate.

Most of the agencies were operating on outdated technology before the upgrades. Officials said they were impressed with the coverage, features and cost of the digital technology compared with other options. Christian County, Ky., operated a group of repeaters that had been in place since the early 1970s. Each department had its own individual repeater, some of which operated at UHF and some at VHF.

“Interoperability was through our dispatch center, with information being relayed from dispatcher to dispatcher on the various repeaters,” said Randy Graham, the county’s deputy emergency manager. “We needed a better system for interoperability.”

The county went live last April with a three-site 18-channel NEXEDGE system with more than 700 radios. The system was still in the test phase in early 2009 when ice storms struck Kentucky and Tennessee. “The system worked without a flaw during that ice storm. It’s a shame we didn’t have it fully deployed,” Graham said.

The county originally planned to deploy an analog MPT 1327 trunked system. The deployment was delayed because of county siting issues. “When the deployment got back on track, Kenwood was releasing the NEXEDGE system,” Graham said. “It was a no- brainer to get the digital technology versus analog.”

The $1.2 million system included all infrastructure and radios for , fire and EMS. The system also serves city, county and state officials, including the Kentucky State Police, local Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officials. The system serves about 35 agencies.

NEXEDGE is based on NXDN, a 6.25-kilohertz FDMA digital air protocol, jointly developed by Icom and Kenwood Communications. Icom markets its NXDN equipment under the Icom Digital Advanced System (IDAS) brand. The NXDN Forum announced several initiatives last week to boost interoperability among NXDN vendors.

Kenwood Communications’ John North, general manager, systems group, said that because of NEXEDGE’s feature set and product specifications, public safety has always been a target market. “With interfaces to legacy analog conventional and trunked systems, NEXEDGE offers the option for public-safety agencies to budget their transition

2 from analog to digital, allowing them to mix the old mobiles and portables with NEXEDGE radios,” North said. “One of the many and more important benefits of NEXEDGE is Project 25 (P25) features at an affordable price.

Some P25 proponents have said introducing another digital technology to public-safety agencies could hinder interoperability. North said the technology is interoperable with P25 using gateways. “We have three or four neighboring counties that have applied for and received approval with some Kentucky homeland-security grant money,” Graham said. “Once they deploy their systems, we can link them together and have a regional system.”

Grant funding has been another issue surrounding the NXDN-based technology. Federal grant programs imply agencies must deploy P25 equipment to garner funding. North said the recent update to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Safecom guide for federal grant programs can be interpreted as requiring P25 deployment for public safety. “But if you read closely, the door is cracked open for an agency with a compelling story to tell,” North said. “Grant funding is a little more challenging but it has been proven it can be done.”

Graham said Christian County used E9-1-1 monies and local budget funds for most of the system. Federal grant money through a drug task force helped purchase radios.

“Economics was the biggest issue; they wanted trunking, they wanted to go digital and they wanted to narrowband in one fell swoop,” said Steve Macke, a consultant with Advent who worked on the Christian County project.

Since December, Kenwood Communications has announced NEXEDGE customers in Tattnall and McDuffie counties and the city of Canton in Georgia, along with Logan County, Ky.

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FCC releases national broadband plan March 16, 2010 Urgent Communications By Donny Jackson URL: http://urgentcomm.com/policy_and_law/news/fcc-releases-broadband-plan- 20100316/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Ur gentCommMostRecent+%28Urgent+Communications%29

The FCC last night released its much-anticipated broadband plan, which includes recommendations for the buildout of a nationwide broadband network for public safety and a funding mechanism to pay for ongoing costs associated with that network.

Despite public-safety officials’ repeated calls for the FCC to recommend reallocation of the 700 MHz D Block for first-responder use, the plan calls for the auction of the 10 MHz

3 of spectrum to commercial operators as part of the agency’s schedule to make 300 MHz of spectrum below 3.7 GHz available during the next five years. The D Block winner would be required to be “technically compatible” with public safety’s broadband initiative using LTE and would have to provide first responders with roaming and priority access on its network.

In terms of funding, the plan calls for Congress to provide as much as $6.5 billion during the next 10 years to cover capital expenditures expected to be necessary to provide 99% population coverage. In addition, the plan estimates that operating costs for the network will be $1.3 billion per year by the network’s tenth year of operation. To address this, the plan calls for Congress to establish an ongoing funding source during the next 18 months in the form of a fee that could be assessed to all broadband users in the United States.

Further details will be unveiled during the commission’s open meeting today. In addition, the FCC will conduct a technical panel regarding the proposed public-safety broadband network at 9:30 a.m. EST tomorrow that will be webcast at www.fcc.gov/live.

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Tuesday Morning Federal Newscast March 16, 2010 Federal News Radio 1500 AM URL: http://www.federalnewsradio.com/index.php?sid=1913263&nid=15

The Morning Federal Newscast is a daily compilation of the stories you hear Federal Drive hosts Tom Temin and Jane Norris discuss throughout their show each day. The Newscast is designed to give FederalNewsRadio.com users more information about the stories you hear on the air…

An update to the 2008 National Emergency Communications Plan is coming soon from the Homeland Security Department. Chris Essid, director of the Office of Emergency Communications, said the new plan will incorporate advanced technologies, but adopting them widely by federal, state and local first responders will take a while. Essid, speaking at a conference in Virginia, said broadband will be among the new technologies. He added that the FCC's national broadband plan, revealed yesterday, will influence the final emergency communications plan….

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Congressional E911 Group Targets Upgrade in Nation's 9-1-1 Call Center Technology March 15, 2010 TMCnet.com By Susan J. Campbell URL: http://www.tmcnet.com/channels/e911/articles/78585-congressional-e911-group- targets-upgrade-nations-9-1.htm

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An upgrade to the United States’ 9-1-1 call center technology could help improve national rescue efforts and, in some cases, it will mean saving a life thanks to location- based technology. A Carmi Times piece reported that the bipartisan Congressional E-911 Caucus is introducing legislation to make this happen.

The caucus is co-chaired by Republicans John Shimkus of Illinois and Richard Burr of North Carolina, and Democrats Anna G. Eshoo of California and Amy Klobuchar of Michigan.

Key grants and programs will be reauthorized through the Next Generation 9-1-1 Preservation Act of 2010. It will also ensure continued funding for the nation’s 6,000 9-1- 1 centers and programs. The House introduced its version on Friday, while the Senate plans to introduce its version Monday.

This legislation is an important step as 9-1-1 call centers receive more than 650,000 distress calls from across the nation every day. These calls are primarily funded through state taxes on phone bills.

With the Next Generation 9-1-1 Preservation Act, a five year federal grant program will be reauthorized to support state 9-1-1 services and improve technology. This Act also introduces improvements to the national E911 Implementation Coordination Office, which is designed to help states upgrade technology and coordinate services between call centers.

“This legislation is about more than reauthorizing grant programs, it’s about creating and maintaining a coordinated approach to 9-1-1 response technology on a nationwide level,” Shimkus said in the Carmi Times. “The Next Generation 9-1-1 technology needs to be fostered and advanced by experts on a national level with the resources to target specific public safety needs.”

The Federal Communication Commission has reported that some states have a history of diverting their 9-1-1 funds to support other programs. With the Next Generation 9-1-1 Preservation Act, states cannot divert the funds and must improve their 9-1-1 call center technology.

Much of the work necessary in the upgrading of 9-1-1 call center technology is to move to E911 capabilities. E911 is a technology that is designed to leverage location-based services to help emergency responders to find the exact whereabouts of distressed 9-1-1 callers. This is not only useful in situations where a single street address refers to a large building, but also in the increased use of cell phones to place distress calls.

It's a technology that E911 solutions provider RedSky Technologies, Inc. knows well. The Chicago-based company is the first of its kind to complete a series of interoperability tests conducted by a nonprofit group that defines requirements and standards for effective and accessible 9-1-1 services in North America.

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RedSky (News - Alert) is the only enterprise 9-1-1 location solution provider to participate in the tests, which were conduct by the National Emergency Number Association at the nonprofit’s first-ever Industry Collaboration Event.

### Emergency communications plan update will blend old and new March 15, 2010 Nextgov By Jill R. Aitoro URL: http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20100315_4604.php?oref=topnews

The Homeland Security Department is incorporating advanced technologies into an emergency communications strategy, but first responders will have to rely on legacy handheld devices for the short term, a DHS official said on Monday.

An update to the 2008 National Emergency Communications Plan will include a roadmap on deploying next-generation technologies, including broadband, said Chris Essid, director of DHS' Office of Emergency Communications. The plan governs how federal, state and local officials stay in touch during disasters.

"We've got to continue evolving the vision to include emerging technologies; however, as technology evolves, it's more critical to focus on the coordination piece of the pie," Essid said during the 9-1-1 Goes to Washington conference in Arlington, Va. "Technologies exist to solve the problems [of emergency communications]; so why haven't they? There is a lack of standard operating procedures, exercises [and] governance. It's the same old gaps."

The broadband piece of the updated strategy will be influenced by the Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Plan, due out on Tuesday, according to Essid. Though details of FCC's plan have not been revealed, recommendations for deploying a dedicated broadband network for the public safety community will be included.

The first response community should not expect an exodus from existing technologies, however, including mobile radios.

"The ability to implement dedicated broadband for emergency response faces a number of challenges; cost, standards, spectrum [and] roaming capability," Essid said. "This is overall unproven for mission-critical voice communication, and a lot of work needs to be done to see if broadband is a viable strategy for public safety."

In the meantime, DHS will lead a dual-path strategy that continues reliance on current land and mobile data communications, while development of a national public safety network moves forward.

6 "One day maybe there will be convergence, but [broadband] is not ready today and won't be tomorrow," Essid said. "Land mobile radio will be here for quite some time, and this is the truth that people need to hear."

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Motorola and Five Leading Emergency Communications Equipment Manufacturers Demonstrate Project 25 ISSI Interoperability March 15, 2010 Media-Newswire.com URL: http://media-newswire.com/release_1114309.html

The Enterprise Mobility Solutions business of Motorola, Inc. ( NYSE: MOT ) today announced the successful completion of Project 25 ( P25 ) interoperability testing using Project 25 Inter-RF Subsystem Interface ( P25 ISSI ) gateways to communicate between a Motorola ASTRO®25 system and P25 systems from five other leading mission critical communications manufacturers, including PlantCML-EADS, Etherstack, Harris Corporation, PowerTrunk and Raytheon Company. These six industry leaders demonstrated another new milestone in interoperability with the successful testing of interoperable communications between the Motorola ISSI.1 Network Gateway and ISSI Gateways from the five other manufacturers.

The testing occurred over the past several weeks using a Motorola ASTRO 25 system connected over an ISSI interface to Project 25 systems from each of the other five leading manufacturers of public safety equipment. Each system was tested separately and successful P25 ISSI wireline interoperability was achieved using each manufacturer’s P25 ISSI gateway.

“This latest testing is another example of P25 manufacturers continuing to work together to advance interoperability for public safety, enabling first responders to communicate in emergency situations,” said Bob Schassler, senior vice president, Motorola Worldwide Radio Solutions. “Motorola supports the Project 25 standard and we are dedicated to enhancing interoperability through the ISSI interface in the public safety environment. This testing highlights our commitment to working with other P25 manufacturers to provide our customers with the confidence that the ISSI standard will allow multiple P25 systems to interoperate to support emergency communications for all public safety agencies.”

The interoperability testing using ISSI gateways marks the fifth major multi- manufacturer P25 interoperability event in the past nine months. The previous four events hosted by various manufacturers tested the P25 Phase 1 CAI to the formal U.S. Department of Homeland Security P25 Compliance Assessment Program ( CAP ).

“The latest tests demonstrated that the ISSI.1 Network Gateway is an easy and cost- effective way to connect P25 systems and implement end-to-end digital interconnectivity to meet the needs of P25 system users who need to interoperate,” Schassler added.

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“Motorola will continue to work with P25 manufacturers and the user community in 2010 and beyond to advance interoperability for first responders.”

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Oregon seeks FCC waiver to build out broadband network March 15, 2010 Urgent Communications By Mary Rose Roberts URL: http://urgentcomm.com/networks_and_systems/news/iafc-oregon-broadband- 20100315/

Oregon's State Interoperability Executive Council (SIEC) has voted to prepare a waiver request that seeks permission from the FCC to build a public-safety statewide broadband wireless network. With such a waiver, Oregon can create a network that lets public-safety responders send more detailed data at faster speeds over a dedicated statewide network, said Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue Chief Jeff Johnson, who chairs the SEIC. Once the SIEC approves the final draft of the waiver application, it can be sent to the FCC, Johnson said.

Specifically, Oregon didn’t have a base radio system that was modern enough to work for the state’s public-safety agencies, said Johnson, who also is the current president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs. He said basic operability was the problem, so since the state was going to expend resources to erect towers and build other infrastructure; it made sense to address interoperability.

“Oregon is at a place where we are building a statewide, digital 700 MHz radio network, and that’s from the ground up, in order to replace four antiquated state agency radio systems,” he said. “In addition, we’re going to allow urgent use at no charge for local fire departments, police officers and emergency responders when they overrun their system.”

Johnson said there are several benefits for the state if it is able to create its own broadband data network in the dedicated 700 MHz spectrum. The move would expedite the introduction of high-speed data capabilities within the coverage area of the Oregon Wireless Interoperability Network (OWIN). The move also would position Oregon for an eventual merger with the proposed nationwide public-safety communications network.

OWIN spokesperson Bill Gallagher further explained that if granted the waiver, the state would be able to entertain public/private partnerships, which may eventually be the key to deploying broadband service for those underserved areas in the state that don’t have it. Currently, deployment of the nationwide network is stalled because of an unsuccessful attempt to auction off some of the spectrum to a private carrier.

8 “A public/private partnership for public-safety communications was envisioned but lack of interest in the spectrum auction from the private sector has delayed its deployment,” he said.

The current estimate to build Oregon’s network is $414 million, Johnson said.

“It’s a big pill to swallow, but it made it more tolerable when we looked at the 60-plus partnerships we were able to garner with local governments that offset the cost of building the system,” he said.

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Harris makes multiband announcements for portable, mobile radios March 15, 2010 Urgent Communications By Donny Jackson URL: http://urgentcomm.com/mobile_voice/news/harris-multiband-portable-20100315/

Harris last week announced that its Unity XG-100P portable multiband radio has been type-accepted by the FCC and today officially introduced the Unity XG-100M, a mobile version of the multiband radio.

Both Unity offerings were displayed last week at the Harris booth during the International Wireless Communications Expo (IWCE). Both products provide coverage for the VHF, UHF and 700/800 bands in a single radio; support P25 trunking, P25 conventional and analog modes of operation; and allow for software-only upgrades to P25 Phase 2.

Featuring noise-cancellation technology that should be attractive to the firefighting users that encounter considerable background noise during their missions, the Unity portable radio has been demonstrated at trade shows for the past year.

“With FCC type acceptance, shipments will begin shortly,” said Harris spokesman Steve Frackleton.

The new Harris Unity mobile radio will have the same feature set as the Unity portables, but the multiband mobile radio will be available with 50-watt transmit power for UHF/VHF and 35-watt transmit power for the 700/800 MHz bands, Frackleton said. A high-power 110-watt Unity mobile also is being planned, according to the company.

Frackleton said shipping of the Unity mobile, which has not yet been certified by the FCC, is expected to begin next year.

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Panel: Broadband Voice for Public Safety is Inevitable

9 March 12, 2010 Urgent Communications By Glenn Bischoff URL: http://urgentcomm.com/networks_and_systems/news/public-safety-broadband- inevitable-20100312/

Leading public-safety communications officials participating in a panel discussion at IWCE 2010 yesterday said that IP-based broadband technologies inevitably would supplant land-mobile radio for the provisioning of public-safety voice communications. But it won’t happen for at least a decade, and it might not happen at all unless the sector’s spectrum needs are met.

Chuck Dowd, deputy chief of the New York City Police Department who is in charge of the NYPD’s communications system, acknowledged that land-mobile radio has provided reliable first-responder communications for decades.

“But the question is, ‘Why can’t we take that reliability and transfer it over to a broadband capability?’ I see no reason why that can’t happen,” Dowd said. “It’s not something that’s going to happen overnight, and it has to be proven. But at the same time, rather than supporting two different types of network — one for broadband data and another for narrowband voice — ultimately the right solution will combine those capabilities.”

Harlin McEwen, chairman of the Public Safety Spectrum Trust, which holds public safety’s 10 MHz of 700 MHz spectrum that would be paired with 10 MHz of commercial spectrum to form the spectral foundation for a nationwide broadband network for first responders — agreed with Dowd on a macro level. “I think Chuck’s vision is the right vision,” McEwen said. “I don’t disagree at all that this vision not only is possible, but is likely. It is just a matter of time.”

But the devil always is in the details, and McEwen quickly shared his concerns over the amount of spectrum currently held by the public-safety sector.

“If we’re going to do this, we’re going to need more spectrum,” McEwen said. “I don’t think we should be putting all of our eggs into the [broadband] basket and going down the path to the future until we have some assurance that we’re going to have enough spectrum to be able to do that.”

The spectrum picture has become murkier of late. Originally, the plan was for the commercial D Block licensee and public safety to share a 20 MHz network. Now, signs indicate that the FCC will allow the commercial entity to operate independently from public safety, which would necessitate a guard band between the two spectrum blocks. That guard band likely would be carved out of public safety’s spectrum, which would reduce the usable airwaves by 20%. This could place a significant roadblock in the path of the broadband voice future that Dowd envisions.

10 Even if the spectrum problems were sorted out today, it will be years before broadband voice becomes a reality because the work to build a voice capability into the standard for Long Term Evolution, or LTE — the technology chosen by public safety for its broadband network — so far has focused on telephony-based approaches that won’t work for public-safety, said Emil Olbrich, lead project engineer in the Office of Law Enforcement Standards of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

However, Olbrich added that the standards body is taking into account public safety’s needs and currently is investigating two approaches — broadcast and multicast — to determine which would be better for delivering the one-to-many voice communications that public safety requires. He cautioned, however, that transport is just the first step in the process. LTE devices also have to be considered, in order to ensure the lowest- possible latency and fastest-possible call setup times, crucial considerations for mission- critical voice.

In this regard, public safety could help its cause greatly by becoming a bigger part of the process, Olbrich said. “We need public safety’s input on their operational requirements,” he said. “You don’t need to know the technical things — we’ll develop those. We just need to know what kind of reliability you need, what kind of availability you need. We need participation from practitioners nationwide to get a feel for what these systems need to be.”

With broadband voice years away, public-safety agencies whose network and subscriber equipment is aging will find themselves in a state of limbo. The key question they face is: Do they upgrade their systems now or do they wait for the broadband vision to become reality? The consensus thinking of the panel is that the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

Bill Schrier, chief technical officer for the city of Seattle, who believes public-safety broadband voice is a decade away, said, “I’m going to continue to invest in our current LMR systems — not major investments, not forklift investments, but investments that will bring them up to Project 25 for their 10-year life.”

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Daniels, Telex debut P25 radio-dispatch interface March 10, 2010 Urgent Communications By Glenn Bischoff URL: http://urgentcomm.com/networks_and_systems/news/daniels-telex-dispatch- interface-20100310/

Daniels Electronics and Telex jointly announced the creation of a Project 25–compliant, digital fixed station interface (DFSI) that lets users connect Daniels’ land-mobile radios to Telex dispatch consoles. The companies are showcasing the DFSI this week at IWCE 2010 in Las Vegas.

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“Now we have end-to-end connectivity in a P25 network from the handheld, through the repeaters, to our base station, through the fixed station interface, to the console — all digital, all encrypted, with all of the P25 messages passed,” said Gerry Wight, Daniels’ director of marketing.

The end-to-end connectivity is a key attribute, Wight said. “With end-to-end , there’s nothing unsecure anywhere in the conversation, which would be important in a police environment” he said. “There’s also no vocoding, so there’s no conversion of the audio and no resulting loss of quality or delays.”

The ability to pass all of the P25 messages also is important, according to Wight. “It passes along things like your GPS location and your emergency [indicator],” he said. “So, if there’s an emergency, the emergency ID will identify the officer, and the console will get a screen pop that says, ‘Officer Smith is down at this location.’ You don’t get those capabilities with analog.”

Previously, Daniels worked with Zetron and Avtec on similar interfaces. “That’s what P25 is supposed to be all about — interoperability in a pure digital fashion between multiple vendors. We’ve now demonstrated that,” Wight said.

Daniels also announced the second generation of an interface developed with Catalyst Communications Technologies, which Wight described as “a step down” from its P25 digital fixed station interfaces. “The audio is not encrypted and it’s not P25 audio, but we’re still passing along the messaging. So, it’s kind of a precursor to full-blown P25.”

The capability is ideal for entities such as a public utility or a forestry service, which doesn’t need to move to a P25 system, but still wants the emergency indicator and location capabilities that the digital standard provides, Wight said. “If I’m a hydro, and a guy falls off a tower, I’ll know who the guy is and what tower he fell off.”

Daniels also is introducing at IWCE a larger battery unit for its portable repeaters that are designed to handle “four or five cross bands,” Wight said.

Finally, Daniels is showing a reconfiguration of a launched last year. “We’ve made it more robust by separating each of the channels into a separate set of hardware, so if one power supply fails or one set of cables breaks, it only will take one channel down instead of several,” Wight said. “We’ve also made the trunking controller fully redundant and backed it up with a UPS [uninterruptible power supply], so if there’s a power glitch the brains won’t go dead.”

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Harris unveils new products, P25 contract March 10, 2010 Urgent Communications

12 URL: http://urgentcomm.com/mobile_voice/news/harris-p25-contract- 20100310/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Ur gentCommMostRecent+%28Urgent+Communications%29

Harris today introduced a vehicular repeater for trunked systems, a new mission-critical portable radio and a P25 contract in Florida at the International Wireless Communications Expo (IWCE).

The VRS7010 cross-band vehicular repeater combines a vehicular repeater and a mobile radio that communicates on P25 trunked and conventional radio systems in the 700 MHz and 800 MHz bands. As a vehicular repeater, the product retransmits weak or low-level signals to extend coverage or reduce signal degradation.

“The VRS7010 delivers extended coverage, better interoperability and a P25 radio — all in one package,” George Helm, vice president and general manager for Harris public safety and professional communications, said in a prepared statement.

Harris also announced that the P7300 multimode portable radio operating in the 700 MHz and 800 MHz bands is available. Although rugged, the P7300 is a lighter-weight handheld that is software-upgradeable to P25 Phase 2.

“We’ve done extensive testing in the field, and it’s been well received,” Harris spokesman Steve Frackleton said during an interview with Urgent Communications. “People like the size and the audio quality.”

A P25-compliant device, the P7300 is a feature-rich, single-band radio and can operate on systems using P25 trunking, P25 conventional, ProVoice digital trunking, OpenSky trunking, EDACS and analog conventional, making it a “great migration radio” for many systems.

One such system is in Volusia County, Fla., which is migrating its legacy EDACS analog conventional system to a Harris P25 system operating at 700 MHz and 800 MHz. The 12- site system will support 9,000 users from more than 40 agencies.

“As a popular destination for a number of events, including the Daytona 500, Bike Week and Biketober Fest, we welcome millions of visitors to Volusia County each year,” Volusia County chair Frank Bruno said in a prepared statement. “It’s imperative we have a dependable, modern communications system so our first responders can communicate clearly and quickly. By migrating over time to the new P25 technology, we will have minimal disruption to users during the transition, while maximizing our current radio resources.”

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Legislation Introduced to Advance E911 March 12, 2010

13 TCMnet.com By Susan J. Campbell URL: http://www.tmcnet.com/channels/e911-hosted-solutions/articles/78477-legislation- introduced-advance-e911.htm

Officials that deal with enhanced 911, or “E911” today are closely following new developments in a movement toward wider government implementation of E911 systems. The Congressional E911 Caucus has introduced legislation today to reauthorize the National 9-1-1 Office and grant program administered by that Office.

The bill would see significant focus on funding and coordination to enable the transition to NG9-1-1. In addition, it addresses E9-1-1 requirements for multi-line telephone system while it also takes the necessary steps to prevent states from raiding 9-1-1 revenues.

One of the lawmakers who introduced the legislation, caucus chair and U.S. Rep. Anna G. Eshoo, a California Democrat, said the bill is “about public safety at its most basic level.”

“Our 9-1-1 call centers are the first point of contact for Americans in an emergency situation,” Eshoo said. “We need to make certain they have all the tools necessary to stay safe and get help when they need it.”

E911 leverages location-based services to help emergency responders get to distressed callers faster. Legislated by more and more states each year, the technology saves lives and property by pinpointing the exact whereabouts of callers who are dialing 9-1-1 from buildings or multi-building campuses that are large and often multi-leveled but have just a single street address, such as schools, hospitals and enterprise businesses.

The Congressional E9-1-1 Caucus was created in 2003 and acts as a bipartisan, bicameral group working to elevate emergency communications issues at the Federal level. The E9-1-1 Caucus has helped to enact legislation to improve 9-1-1 service, making America safer and more secure.

The E9-1-1 Caucus takes the stand that citizen-activated emergency response systems are an essential component of national security. It must be a national priority to improve and upgrade the nation’s 9-1-1 system. The group is ready to leverage new technologies and the power of broadband to improve the ability of first responders to save lives.

The legislation introduced today aims “to amend the National Telecommunications and Information Administration Organization Act to enhance and promote the Nation’s public safety and citizen activated emergency response capabilities through the use of 9-1-1 services, to further upgrade public safety answering point capabilities and related functions in receiving 9-1-1 calls, and to support in the construction and operation of a ubiquitous and reliable citizen activated system.”

14 Specifically, within 270 days after the date of the enactment, the Administrator General Services will issue a report to Congress that identifies the 9-1-1 capabilities of the multi- line telephone system in use by all Federal agencies in all Federal buildings and properties.

In general, within 90 days after enactment, the Federal Communications Commission will issue a public notice that seeks comment on the feasibility of requiring MLTS operators to provide a sufficiently precise indication of a 9-1-1 caller’s location, while also avoiding the imposition of undue burdens on manufacturers, providers and operations in the MLTS space.

An MTLS is a system that is comprised of common control units, telephone sets, control hardware and software and adjunct systems that include network and premises based systems, including network and premises-based systems, like Centrex and VoIP, and other systems such as PBX ( News - Alert), Hybrid and Key Telephone Systems. Impacted systems include those owned or leaded by governmental agencies, non-profit entities and for-profit businesses.

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A phased approach to improve radio communications March 8, 2010 PoliceOne.com By Captain Eddie Reyes URL: http://www.policeone.com/communications/articles/2015922-A-phased-approach- to-improve-radio-communications/

Few arguments against using plain language and common terminology are defensible anymore

The world is more interconnected than ever. In real time, most of us can communicate and collaborate between jurisdictions and emergency response disciplines. We have the ability to communicate in a way that was never believed possible. What does this mean to the public safety community? It means that more timely and clear communications is the expectation of new recruits and of the citizens we serve. Anyone who has seen a police show has surely heard someone say, “10-4” into a land mobile radio. In the 1940s the deployment of two-way radio systems began to overload early, single-channel radio systems. This was a major factor that gave birth to what the emergency response community knows as coded language — the use of 10-codes. Most citizens are not aware that many emergency response agencies have their own unique coded language. While TV may have popularized a defacto standard for what “10-4” means across the country, in fact, there are no agreed upon standard codes to communicate outside of one’s own organization. As a result, unique codes used throughout the United States represent a significant barrier in creating seamless, clear communications among public safety officials, mostly in the law enforcement arena. As a result, a trend in public safety communications is toward the use of plain language1.

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Living Through History Some will argue that we are trying to fix something that’s not broken. Before I address that myth, I need to give a historical view of my research and personal experience on this matter. On January 13, 1982, a Boeing 737 — Air Florida Flight 90 — crashed into the 14th Street Bridge in Washington, D.C. Plunging into the Potomac River during a severe snowstorm, the crash killed 74 persons onboard and four on the ground. Just prior to crash, the National Capital Region experienced severe blizzard conditions and most roads were closed due to icy conditions. Traffic was pretty much at a standstill. Those who live in DC are probably saying, “So what’s new, traffic is pretty much always at a standstill around here,” but the ugly fact of the matter is that first responders took a very long time to arrive on the scene because of the weather and gridlock.

As if that wasn’t enough, during the crash, Metro suffered its first fatal subway crash, which meant that the busiest airport, busiest highway, and busiest subway line were all closed simultaneously, essentially paralyzing the area.

I mention this scenario because most who argue that we are trying to fix something that is not broken tend to be from rural or suburban areas who tend to think large scale and/or routine mutual aid is mostly for metropolitan areas. A large aircraft or weather disaster can happen anywhere, anytime. When it does, public safety will come out in very large numbers to help out. That’s what we do. “That’s how we roll.”

In studying some of the after-action reports of the Air Florida disaster and related events, I discovered there were 19 agencies named as responders, all on unique radio systems that did not allow them to talk to one another. But even if the technology would have allowed it back then (today, for the most part, it does), I doubt they would have been able to understand each other’s unique radio codes.

Where Are We Now? So today, while technology has given us the ability to talk to one another, regardless of discipline, radio system and/or municipality, some still could not work in a large-scale, mutual aid environment because not everyone has adopted plain language for land mobile radios.

Plain language, a government-wide initiative, has been discussed in the public safety community for a long time. Emergency response communities across the country are beginning to reduce — or eliminate all together — the codes they use in favor of plain language. In December 2006 the National Incident Management System (NIMS) issued an alert mandating that first responders use plain language in multi-jurisdictional, multi- agency response2. The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Emergency Communications (OEC) established the Plain Language Working Group in April 2009. This group was comprised of more than 40 public safety officials from across the country representing multiple disciplines. The intent of this working group was to identify lessons learned from those emergency response organizations that transitioned from coded language to plain language.

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This group recognized that simply encouraging a transition to plain language is not enough to improve communications. It concluded that common language must be identified in order to effectively eliminate codes while maintaining the interoperability required during response. On September 10, 2009 NIMS issued another alert, reinforcing the requirement to use plain language for mutual aid events, stating “the use of plain language in emergency response is a matter of public safety, especially the safety of first responders and those affected by the incident.” 3

It is not that hard to transition. In my estimation, it takes two key ingredients — willingness to do it and finding the right person(s) to get it done. In 2006 when I was the chair of the Virginia State Interoperability Executive Committee (SIEC)4, I made it a priority to identify and adopt common language protocols in the Commonwealth of Virginia for daily operations in preparation for major emergency situations. Working on the Initiative Action Team (IAT) alongside many practitioners from many disciplines (as well as all public safety associations in the Commonwealth), we considered three options:

1) Status Quo 2) All plain language 3) A hybrid approach

The Hybrid consisted of mostly plain language with a very limited set of standardized radio codes. The IAT facilitated many face-to-face meetings and conference calls to determine recommendations and continue to define the terms and recommendations. In addition, we sent out questionnaires to all of Virginia’s public safety agencies.

We wanted to learn each agency’s current radio codes and which they would you be willing to convert to plain language. What we discovered was that the problem was much bigger than we anticipated. Some agencies had up to three different sets of radio codes within their organization, for example: “10-4,” “Signal 20,” and “Code 5.” Throughout the Commonwealth, very few matched.

Bomb Throwers While there was some disagreement among the IAT members at first, in the end, most agreed that humans respond according to training and repetition and that transition to plain language would only be successful if the protocol was mandated and used day-to- day. A compromise was reached with the “bomb throwers” on the team, those who alleged this change was going to get law enforcement personnel killed. The majority agreed there are a few situations where coded LMR language was necessary for personnel safety. Therefore, we selected the second option.

But how do you make a change in an organization that is this drastic and avoid confusion? A change of this magnitude was not going to occur overnight and not without occasional slip ups.

17 During the early stages, the IAT envisioned confusion, such as, “Did he mean the new 10 code or the old 10 code?” To address this concern, we lined up all the radio codes that all agencies in the Commonwealth used and determined “signal” was the least used. To make a clear distinction to those making this change that someone was using the new code, it had to sound foreign.

We had to prepare each agency with a “coat of armor” when they walked into roll call to talk about this new change. There were lots of myths out there and change, especially this change, is never easy in the law enforcement culture. We had to be prepared for myths such as:

• “It’s more secure” — encryption is the only secure method of communications • “The bad guys will know what we’re saying” — most radio codes are on the Internet • “It’s more efficient” — consider the following: “Let me have a Signal 2, Code 3 for a combative 10-17” and “Let me have a priority back-up for a combative subject” have a roughly comparable number of syllables so it does not take much more radio space to say the exact same thing in plain language that any mutual-aid officer could understand

Plain language and common terminology have been discussed in the public safety community for a long time. This issue is fraught with cultural and political barriers. Few, if any, arguments against using plain language and common terminology are defensible anymore. Have you taken the time to listen to your dispatchers? Many jump in and out in their use of plain language versus codes. As plain language continues to gain traction the risk is that we will fall in to the trap of believing that we are communicating more efficiently. We are only safer if the public safety community knows what their partners — be it within discipline or across jurisdictions — are saying along with the intent behind the words during the response. If plain language is critical to interoperability and the implementation of NIMS, common terminology and its use in daily operations is an absolute necessity.

Conclusion In the end, I credit many law enforcement leaders who had the vision to forecast back then that this was the right thing to do when the majority did not. Leaders such as Colonel Flaherty, Superintendent of the VA State Police, who in November of 2006 decided this was the direction his organization was going in and was very much the first “domino” in the “domino effect” throughout the Commonwealth. Leaders like Chief Doug Scott of the Arlington Police Department, Chief David Roher of the Fairfax County Police Department, and Director William O’Toole of the Northern Virginia Criminal Justice Training Academy who had the vision to ensure coordinated training in all roll calls on plain language and served as spokespersons on the importance of a common language protocol.

They all agreed this would require a phased in approach — that it would not occur overnight — and that occasional slip ups would occur along the way. But most important, what these leaders loaned to this process was their philosophical point of view, that it was the right thing to do! Today, the public and elected officials are less forgiving when they

18 learn public safety still cannot communicate effectively during mutual aid events. Finally, they agreed it was simply unreasonable to expect law enforcement officers to instantly switch to a common radio language and protocol during a stressful mutual aid event once they become interoperable with another agency.

As agencies transition from coded language to plain language they are developing their own list of terms. This is creating a new challenge: each discipline developing its own list of terms and definitions for daily operations which may conflict with the terms and definitions of neighboring disciplines or jurisdictions. During a mutual aid event this could result in delayed communication, confusion, or both. While the use of plain language is preferable to the use of codes, it is important to recognize that at present there is no agreed-upon common terms and associated definitions.

Simply said, there are no common terms to define the public safety community’s plain language! Having a fireman yell “fire” to a policeman may not provide the necessary response. A fireman grabs a hose while a policeman pulls his gun. While this may be an overly simplistic analogy, it does not take much thought to realize that a minimal set of common terms are required for true interoperability as well as for the safety of our responders.

In closing, I would like to say this transition is starting to occur but at different paces in different regions with unique protocols. Can you imagine this transition taking place on the east coast and another on the west coast following different protocols? During the rollout waves, they are likely to meet somewhere in the middle, say Kansas. We will have to address this issue all over again, but fortunately, this time it will be on a much smaller scale!

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Fed Emergency Communications Center Struggling March 8, 2010 Government InformationWeek By Elizabeth Montalbano URL:http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/security/showArticle.jhtml?art icleID=223200083

A federal center for coordinating government agency disaster recovery efforts has hit some bumps in the road as it tries to improve how government agencies communicate in times of national crisis, according to a progress report about its efforts.

Members of the Emergency Communications Preparedness Center said they are having difficulty getting agencies to comply with its recommendations, mainly because they have no authority to force them to do so. This and other concerns were raised in a report released by the Government Accountability Office, which reviewed the ECPC's charter and interviewed officials from member agencies.

19 The ECPC was formed in 2007 in the wake of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina to serve as a clearinghouse for the sharing of emergency communications information during a national crisis. Its charter was approved last October.

The group is required to submit an annual assessment to Congress regarding the preparedness of government agencies to communicate effectively in a crisis.

One key problem the ECPC faces is that it cannot direct or require federal, state, or local agencies that play key roles in emergency communications to take any actions in response to its recommendations. This, obviously, hinders its chances of achieving its goals to coordinate government emergency response efforts, the group reported.

"ECPC's goal of providing input and recommendations regarding the establishment of interoperability and operability goals must be carried out in the absence of compulsory authority," according to the report. "However, our prior work has shown that coordination is critical when an entity does not have the authority to compel others to comply with its requirements."

Other challenges outlined in the letter include an inability to prove its value to stakeholders, coordinating with the various agencies with which it must work, and maturing as a government agency.

To help remedy some of the difficulties the group is having and to try to get all of its member agencies on the same page, EPCP officials plan to incorporate some goals, objectives and best practices into an EPCP Program Management Plan.

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