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When you want Straight Answers
Real-World Wireless Intelligence
When anything significant takes place in the wireless industry that will affect the Public Safety community, Andrew Seybold can be counted on to take a hard look at it and then provide readers with straight answers about the promise, the reality, and the hype. He is Public Safety's Advocate before the FCC and the commercial wireless industry.
Deeply involved in the Public Safety community, he brings to his advocacy experiences gained over 40 years as a first responder, commercial vendor, consultant, writer, and educator as well as a grounding in the emerging world of wireless broadband communications.
When the noise level reaches a fever pitch, look to Andrew Seybold to provide a voice of reason that clarifies complex issues and provides invaluable insight that can be acted upon.
The NPSBN is the most ambitious nationwide network ever undertaken in the United States and it is different from the public commercial networks in many aspects. First and foremost, it must provide the capabilities needed by the Public Safety community, and it must be more reliable. more
This morning, the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC) published a document intended for distribution to any and all elected federal, state, and local elected officials. This document states clearly and in plain language why Public Safety Land Mobile Radio (LMR) voice systems MUST be maintained even though FirstNet is building out a new Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN). more
My advice for the technologists is to continue the good work they are doing but to tone down their technology assessments and predictions with the reality of the time involved and all of the processes and issues that must be addressed and solved, assuming they can be solved. Until then, the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network will remain about data and video, while today’s Land Mobile Radio networks are about mission-critical voice. Both networks will be needed for a very long time to come. more
Public Safety, on the other hand, will most likely turn this model around. That is, there will be more data, video, and information sent from the devices back to command centers, Incident Commanders, and others while the amount of data and video sent to the devices will be less, and less often. more
In this, the first of a multi-part series, I will attempt to outline what I believe are the steps that need to be taken to move forward with this network—a network that will both serve the Public Safety community for many years, and that will live up to the Public Safety community’s expectations. more
Next to FirstNet and Public Safety. No matter what we do, the FirstNet network will resemble a commercial cellular-type network because it IS a cellular-type network. There will be too many sites, each with multiple points of failure. more
The Politics and the Technology As the FirstNet board addresses the architecture for the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network using LTE (Long Term Evolution), one of the [...] more
Don’t rely on it, but try it. Learn what broadband can and cannot do. Broadband should be looked upon as a new tool to make first responders safer, to assist the citizens better and faster, and to cut down on the voice traffic on your network. more
The people needed for the CEO, COO, CTO, and CFO-type of positions reporting to the FirstNet board need to be high-level, skilled people who have been involved in planning and setting up a broadband network and handling the finances, technology, and operational aspects of such a system. more
I think this is also important for the Public Safety Community since these auctions will provide most of the $7 billion in funding for the Public Safety Broadband Network. more