FDNY giving P25 another shot...

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richard
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FDNY giving P25 another shot...

Post by richard »

From http://www.nysun.com/article/30757

The Errors of 9/11 Have City at Work On Radio System

By JILL GARDINER - Staff Reporter of the Sun
April 11, 2006

City officials are quietly developing a new radio system that could prevent a
repeat of the fatal miscommunications that contributed to the deaths of 343
firefighters, dozens of police officers, and thousands of civilians during the
World Trade Center attacks.

The new Motorola system, which is scheduled for use by 2008, will consolidate
various city radio systems into a single network that emergency responders and
other city agencies will be able to access.

Although the new frequency, known as Channel 16, will be used during
day-to-day operations, it could be most valuable when lives are at stake. The
September 11 attacks made that clear, according to city documents obtained
under the Freedom of Information Act.

"That singular event further crystallized the extreme need for this build
out," the city's request for proposals said. "The City cannot save lives and
protect property if it cannot communicate to its Public Safety Agencies."

In 2004, the federal government allocated Channel 16 for municipal usage
nationwide. The New York City plan will cost $75 million, according to the
contract, which was registered by the city's Comptroller, William Thompson Jr.

The system will provide two citywide functions: It will serve as the new
frequency for Fire Department dispatch and will be subdivided for various city
agencies. In the event of a disaster, it will allow those agencies to better
communicate.

The money will pay for antennas, training, transmitter and receiver sites, and
other equipment, according to city documents.

"The problems with interagency communication were blatant and deadly
immediately after the attacks of the World Trade Center," the director of the
National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, Irwin
Redliner, said. "It has taken a long time ... but one would think it would
have been possible sooner than four-and-a-half years after the attacks."

City officials from the Department of Information Technology &
Telecommunications said yesterday that they the timeline makes sense given
that the federal allocation for Channel 16 was two years ago.

Officials said the city has already made a wide variety of communication
improvements since the Twin Towers collapsed and that the radio channel is
only one aspect of "interoperability." A spokesman for the city's Fire
Department, Francis Gribbon, said the new radio network is part of much larger
puzzle.

He pointed out that the Fire Department and Police Department have a joint
command structure that is activated during emergencies, which did not exist
before. He also noted that fire and police officials already have the ability
to communicate via radio in a way that they couldn't in 2001.

Communication between agencies was a problem during the Trade Center response
that resulted in firefighters climbing higher into the towers when they should
have been evacuating. Dr. Redliner said he also believed that preparedness is
largely about human coordination, not just new technology.

The city selected cellular giant Motorola Inc. last year. City documents
indicate there were plans to build the new network even before September 11.

Still, documents said: "The proposed build-out represents a critical post 9/11
need which cannot be accomplished via the overcrowded 800 MHz public safety
spectrum."

The project is now in the early design phases. Once up and running it will
also allow the city to communicate with officials in Nassau, Suffolk, and
Westchester counties as well as at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority
and the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey.

City Council Member Peter Vallone Jr., the chairman of the public safety
committee, said there have been a number of "obvious improvements" in
communication since 2001, but that "if you talk to the first responder on the
street they are still asking for better communication."

"I'm not going to wonder what could have been," he said, referring the deaths
at the Trade Center. "The heroes did everything they could have done with what
they had and our mandate now is to learn from that incident and make sure that
we do it even better next time."

"Channel 16," he said, "will go a long way toward improving inter-agency
communication."

City Council Member Gale Brewer, the chairwoman of the council's technology
committee, said she would like to see the new system functional sooner, rather
than later.

"It's not a day-to-day concern, but it is a concern if there was any kind of
disaster," she said. "There are lots of ways in which the city and the various
agencies are better prepared ... but on the technology front there are gaps.
They are being addressed, but slowly."

The move is part of a larger effort to use radio spectrum space more
effectively.

A summary of the plan that Motorola submitted to the city says it will use 24
channels on the frequency and that the so-called Citywide Radio Network will
allow for "dynamic statewide/regional radio interconnections."

The system will also be compatible with existing city radios, most of which
are Motorola.

Dr. Redliner said: "Fortunately there has been no test of our communication
capacity since 2001, but the sooner we get this running the better,"

"The trick now is to get this done before the next major disaster occurs," he
said. "In that sense, even though it's four-and-a-half years later, we're
still in this intense race against time."
Talk on the street is it'll most likely use APCO25 and 2.5 khz deviation with a channel spacing of 12.5 or 6.25 khz.

I think Moto will push REALLY hard this time to have NYC blanketed with so many repeaters/voting receivers to try and fix their major failure on 9/11.

And they're actually trying to work out interoperability here.

Guess I should get on the hunt for a T-band XTS.
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JAYMZ
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Post by JAYMZ »

Don't be in a rush.

I have it on good authority that if it happens it won't be fully implemented for 10 years by the time it's all said and done. That is if they do something from basically scratch. Plus there is a rumor floating about that NYC will sign onto SWiN... so we'll see.
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richard
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Post by richard »

JAYMZ wrote:Don't be in a rush.

I have it on good authority that if it happens it won't be fully implemented for 10 years by the time it's all said and done. That is if they do something from basically scratch. Plus there is a rumor floating about that NYC will sign onto SWiN... so we'll see.
Isn't Statewide OpenSky?

$hit. That sucks.
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JAYMZ
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Post by JAYMZ »

That it is.

we'll see though.
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motorola_otaku
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Post by motorola_otaku »

In 2004, the federal government allocated Channel 16 for municipal usage
nationwide.
I thought the Ch. 16 allocation was a NYC-only thing? Hell, if there were additional UHF spectrum allocated here, the volunteer fire departments would be on it like white on rice.
And the sign says you got to have a membership card to get inside.
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richard
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Post by richard »

motorola_otaku wrote:I thought the Ch. 16 allocation was a NYC-only thing? Hell, if there were additional UHF spectrum allocated here, the volunteer fire departments would be on it like white on rice.
I dunno... but when I lived way out in Central Jersey, 16 was gone from the TV lineup out there... but that's likely because we were still close enough to NYC.
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Pj
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Post by Pj »

I came across some stuff from NYC a few weeks about about this, and some other things they have been working on for awhile, along with testing documents, user loads etc. I'll see if I can dig it back up again. Very interesting reading.

I believe that the bulk of the radio system was going to remain conventional, but it looked at all the radio systems and users in NYC.

There are some people in NY who thing the SWN will be up in three years and going smoothly. However if you read the contract, the actual buildout won't begin until the two test systems (in the realitivily flat western NY) are built and approved by the state. Its not suppose to be up and running within 3 years of the contract signing.
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