Month: May 2012

Out of the darkness we build the First Responder Network

/ drmikemyers / Leave a comment

Frantic realization starts to set in.

I have a dream of a national network that is same in every way as a national carrier — only better. I envision a wireless broadband architecture that entails the features of the traditional LMR and RF based handheld solutions, but also has the deep artistic and creative value of the smart phone; with feature rich apps that do nothing but support the needs to help all of our first responders.

Imagine its the desolate hours following a major hurricane that made a rapid course change and came ashore without sufficient warning. Through the eerie calm after the storm, and within the darkness of the night, there sits a family of six on the roof of a badly and submerged structure; a pregnant Mother, Father, teenage daughter, 10 and 6 year old sons and a 19 month old little girl. All corralled together in wet pajamas shivering, not from the cold, but the shock of where they are. There is no power. The water is everywhere. In order to survive they had to climb in desperation to the roof of their home in hopes of escaping the rising water. It’s 2 am in the morning and not a light in sight; nor a sound for miles except for the faint calls for help and an occasional dog barking in darkness. The 6 year old son has asthma and the mother is feeling pains from the stress from the heat of the night. The night air has calmed enough for the mosquitos to search for survival as well. All the father can do is start to assess their situation and notice that all his belongings; cell phone, radio, medicine, food and drinkable water, were lost in the house below. He comes to the conclusion that he is helpless in what he can do for his family to survive. With the stress, and the anxiety of knowing that he is failing as the provider of his family, his mind starts to wonder to the insane actions required.

Five miles away a patrol car approaches the edge of a wooded area. Its the end of a road that is impassible from that point further. The officer rotates his body towards a mounted laptop. This officer has been dispatched to search and rescue in hopes of possibly providing some kind of support to faint and distant cries. The officer knows that not far ahead lies a rural neighborhood that was thriving with families with children. From his laptop the patrolman then dispatches a remotely operated quad copter (UAV) from the roof of his car to view the damage area up to 5 miles away. That same UAV would be equipped with Smart HD video, SAR Imaging (synthetic Aperture Radar) and FLIR Thermal Imaging (Forward Looking Infra-Red) technologies as well as a audio output device. After a few seconds of flight at a low altitude, yet above what used to be a dense wooded area, and even in the darkest of nights, the SAR identifies movement some 10 acres ahead, within milliseconds the UAV repositions and rotates the FLIR that picks up body heat — not just one, but multiple heat signatures.  The officer radios back to the mobile command and control center some ten miles away with his handheld SMART device equipped with both LMR and LTE capabilities. Instantaneously the command is viewing the officers remotely operated UAV and repositions a high flying UAV platform that was already pre-dispatch to the affected areas even before the storm hit.

Operating at a altitude much further above, and with multitude of capabilities, the platform scans a 5 mile radius with the precision of a HD solution that could read the stitching of a baseball from 10 miles above in both night and day. The UAV also includes a satellite communication multi-downlink functionality. Instantaneously this UAV picks up not just 5 body signatures — but hundreds. These images are being reviewed in realtime and coordinated through and emergency response center manned by multiple first response organizations; Police, Fire, EMS, Utilties, Forestry, Agriculture, the Navy, Marine, Coast Guard and Army resources both stationed off the coast and further inland. Through a coordinated attack, and almost simultaneously, the command center commander issues orders that activates a quick reaction EMS force to be dispatch via a Navy, Marine, Army and Coast Guard of which some have been prepositioned based Sea Stallions sitting off the coast — as well as Marine and Coast Guard fast response boats. Having already assessed the flow of the historical data from the SMART Grid, as it was affected during the storm, the command was able to accurately position power crews to start bringing the power back up, even before the storm had passed, as to coordinate the restoration of power to possible emergency response staging and refugee areas. At the same time the States Commerce, Health and Agriculture services, and with the help of the American Red Cross, were already coordinating provisions to the worse affected areas.

Meanwhile, back on that rooftop stood a father in desperation. He was already starting to envision the necessity for him to try and swim into the submerged house as to obtain his sons medications. Once obtained he would return then have to continue to swim beyond the home, in the pitch black, to try and find some type of assistance for his family. Desperation was setting in and the decision to go was made. Then out of the darkness he sees a small light and the faint hum of what sounds like a humming bird. Within seconds the small humming bird turns out to be a small remotely operated UAV operated by that patrolman more than 2 miles away. The officer positions the UAV just above the mans head and then, through the audio capability of the UAV, conveys that help is on the way and that they are due to arrive at his position within 2 minutes. Then out of the darkness he can hear the roar of the massive Sea Stallion moving in towards him. Then, almost simultaneously appears a rubber boat manned by three crew members and an EMT to which its approach was concealed by the noise of the massive helicopter. The relief sets in as the man collapses to his knees crying for the fact that his family will be saved.

I have a dream that this is what the Broadband Public Safety Network could bring. None of this would be possible without the coordinated capabilities of a States resources acting in unison under one communication infrastructure that is equipped and hardened for the worst disasters imagined. The situations are real and the technology is already achievable.

I have a dream.

/ drmikemyers / Leave a comment

APCO Broadband Summit and the FirstNet Board Business Case Alignment


I got back from the APCO Broadband Summit yesterday after attending the two day conference. It was the typical roadshow of where things are in the process but the main message delivered is nothing is going to happen until the FirstNet Board is created. One thing did grasp my attention though that was the panel that hosted the commercial carriers, i.e. AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile and USCellular. 
The carriers basically laid out a nice message of “we have all the know-hows to doing this deployment”, but one thing sticks out. The business case for a commercial carrier is about making money off subscribers and services. Nothing wrong with that, I actually support it, but the Public Safety Broadband network is not about revenue creation; at least on the face of it. It’s more about setting up a private protected broadband network using LTE to insure there is never a lost emergency call, or command response, during a major incident. With such a gap in the business alignment why would the carriers be trying so hard to get the soon to be established FirstNet Board (who will oversee the PSBN deployment) to agree to use their networks instead. In essence the carriers want the spectrum for their own use…that being to make money off subscribers. What really surprises me in that some of the influential members of the APCO community support this thought process. I understand the fact that the carriers probably know better than anybody else to deploy a commercial broadband service for subscribers, but this is not a commercial broadband network (actually they know how to make money off the network not actually build it. Other integrators actually build them usually under a premium of pass throughs in cost). 
What if the commercial carriers just waited? As part of the FCC’s requirements there exist the need to establish broadband access to the rural and far reaching urban areas so that everyone can have access to broadband technologies. If I were a carrier why would I fight to deploy the costly infrastructure (due to hardening requirements it may be as much as 3 times the cost of the typical commercial broadband deployment) when I could just wait and then perform a much more efficient Managed Services contract with the State and/or FirstNet to have all the broadband subscribers in the rural areas access through the FirstNet network and piped back to the commercial carrier networks? To me this would be a lot more cost efficient for the carriers themselves. But one further thought remains…that being the survival of some of the carriers themselves. 
With the consolidation of the commercial carriers, and the lack of spectrum, some of those carriers do not have the right spectrum to sustain their business for the long-haul. case in point; T-Mobile. Its a known fact that AT&T and Verizon have the adjoining bands of spectrum that surround the D-Block for Public Safety. Being that they are the largest commercial carriers in the US means that the OEMs will manufacture phones in to meet the requirements in those bands, which means other bands will not get the attention needed for the long-term, thus comes end-of-life on certain product lines in the phone areas. This causes a snow-balling affect whereas the infrastructure follows. If you aren’t in that curve of technical development then eventually you are doomed to fail if you don’t adapt. Thus someone like T-Mobile needs to be able to build markets that the OEMs will manufacture too…but the two largest are not playing in those bands so the fight for survival through spectrum allocations begins. This is why I believe you have the carriers clamoring to win Public Safety Broadband developments. They want the spectrum. 

The spectrum belongs to the Federal Government and should be sublet to the States for deployment, execution and operations. It has to be State centralized because have you ever tried to run maintenance of 30,000 cell towers within the localization of one State from Washington DC? It’s not easy and requires 3-4 hour response times which means it has to happen locally. The FirstNet Board should act as a corporate headquarter element then create the design template, establish the procurement procedures, outline the governance model and then allow the States to build to those mandates. A typical State has roughly 30-40 State Entities. Most of these entities have some form of Public Safety and Emergency responsibilities. Those State, and entwined Federal Agencies, are the real clients for the Public Safety Broadband Network. Most of the press today only talks about the Police, Fire and EMS portions, but they will be only a small piece (yet critical piece) to the overall client base for this network. As an example: if another hurricane like Katrina hits and you don’t have power utilities as part of the Statewide Emergency response scenario then they are doomed to their reliance on the commercial carriers for communications for all their SMART and electrical grid operations. The SMART Grid to-date has been deployed using 3G technologies. Those same Utility players have now been given notice that 3G is end-of-life and that they need to move to LTE, but you only have two choices for LTE service if you don’t have your own spectrum; commercial carriers or the FirstNet. I shouldn’t have to explain what happens if the Utilities are forced to utilize commercial hardening standards. 
As was the case for the automotive industry; is it the duty of the Federal Government to help the commercial business case of the carriers? Why can’t we just focus on the design, deployment and operations of a Public Safety Broadband Network? Leave the business of commercial broadband business to the carriers and let the FirstNet build their own private architecture by not trying to shoehorn a business case of the commercial carriers into this mold. Lets just build it to the requirements of the States and the Public Safety entities that reside within them; then let the commercial carriers compete for the non-prioritized rural and urban subscribers who need broadband access later. After all, tying ourselves to the commercial carriers does not resolve the case of the Earthquake in DC, or the 9-11 disaster. Commercial cellphones failed in those instances why would this be any different?