Press
By Paul Kirby
The turnout at a two-day inaugural stakeholder meeting last week that was designed to help solicit input and support for the deployment of a public safety 700 megahertz band demonstration network was more than twice what organizers had expected, according to the project’s leader.
“It was far above expectations,” Emil Olbrich, lead project engineer for the Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) program, which is a joint initiative of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, told TR Daily. “We were expecting between 40 and 60 people. We had over 140 people.” The meeting was held in Boulder, Colo., where the PSCR program is housed at the Commerce Department’s labs.
Mr. Olbrich noted that attendees at last week’s meeting included representatives of all major U.S. wireless carriers, infrastructure and other equipment vendors, and the public safety community, including jurisdictions that are seeking waivers from the FCC to build out 700 MHz band networks early.
Among the jurisdictions represented were Boston, the District of Columbia, Houston, Seattle, the San Francisco Bay area, Los Angeles County, and Broward County, Fla., and the states of Colorado, Oregon, and New Mexico. Among the infrastructure and equipment vendors represented were Motorola, Inc., Northrop Grumman Corp., Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens Networks, Harris Corp., Cisco Systems, Inc., and Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson.
Mr. Olbrich said PSCR officials wanted to convey the message that the test network it is building should be the only one of its kind focusing on public safety’s needs, adding, “Our intent is that capital resources aren’t wasted by municipalities.”
The meeting covered project planning and scheduling, stakeholder participation and expectations, and initial test planning for the network, which will be designed to demonstrate and evaluate LTE (long term evolution) public safety capabilities to government agencies, vendors, the FCC, and others.
Mr. Olbrich told the gathering and TR Daily that officials hope the network will generate vendor interest in developing products for 700 MHz Band 14, which includes the D block and adjacent 10 MHz of spectrum licensed to the Public Safety Spectrum Trust (PSST). And he said he hopes the network would help public safety agencies see what the LTE standard permits and what vendors are planning on deploying. He also said it could help assist cities, states, and regions that want to build out 700 MHz band networks early.
Mr. Olbrich noted that Verizon Wireless and other carriers have LTE trials underway or planned, but those are not intended to look at public safety requirements, as the demonstration network will do.
“Right now, there is no ecosystem - both on the infrastructure side, and on the subscriber unit side for the Band Class 14, which public safety is part of,” Mr. Olbrich said. “We’re trying to start that ecosystem, get the requirements for that so manufacturers can start manufacturing equipment, provide a place for manufacturers to come and deploy their equipment, [and provide] one place for public safety to be able to come. We’re not looking to reinvent the wheel here. Things and parameters that are being tested out commercially - we’re not looking to necessarily reproduce those.”
Instead, the project will look at what the LTE standard enables, what vendors are planning to provide, and what gaps there are in meeting public safety needs, he said. Vendors will then be encouraged to supply those capabilities.
Multiple working groups will be formed to work on aspects of the network’s planning and deployment, although Mr. Olbrich stressed last week that PSCR staff have “the final say” in all decisions. The staff is well-versed in recommended public safety broadband requirements having helped draft National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC) proposals concerning those needs last year and prior to the FCC’s failed auction of the D block.
The demonstration network will be operated in two places - north of Boulder in a radio quiet zone at Table Mountain that is overseen by NTIA’s Institute for Telecommunication Sciences - and in the District of Columbia, in partnership with D.C.’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer.
Mr. Olbrich said he hopes the network will be operational with at least one vendor’s product being tested by the end of the third quarter, although he acknowledged that the timeline is contingent on equipment availability. The schedule for testing to begin, however, is dependent on equipment being available, Mr. Olbrich noted. He said prototype Band Class 14 devices are currently available and additional equipment should be available from vendors by this summer. “But we don’t have any official commitments,” he added.
The first phase will involve 650 test cases that have been defined, including about 150 that have been defined for public safety, and run through the end of March 2011, he said. The second phase will involve testing of feature functionalities or products that weren’t available during the first phase, he said. He said there is no scheduled end of the initiative.
NIST’s Office of Law Enforcement Standards has reserved up to $1.5 million for the project over the next year for engineering support, space, and test equipment, according to Michael Newman, a NIST spokesman. NIST did not seek additional funding in its fiscal year 2011 budget request, Mr. Newman said. LTE equipment will be provided by vendors under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement that companies sign with NIST, according to Messrs. Newman and Olbrich. Mr. Olbrich also said that PSCR officials are looking for federal agency partners.
Mr. Olbrich stressed at last week’s meeting that the purpose of the network was not to compare the products of various vendors, saying that any reports on the performance of products tested on the network would not disclose them by name. He told TR Daily that while major vendors plan to participate in the project, smaller ones will be treated equally. “It’s a vendor-neutral place,” he said. Small companies “essentially get equal footing as a multinational, global carrier or company.”
The PSCR program also will work with the FCC’s newly formed Emergency Response Interoperability Center (ERIC), which is being tasked with helping develop technical standards to enable the deployment of early, interoperable public safety networks and an eventual nationwide system.
“We don’t set policy here,” Mr. Olbrich said. “That’s up for the FCC ERIC to do. The ERIC doesn’t have the capabilities to test out some of the feature functionality for public safety. That’s where we come in.”
He also stressed the importance of his project bringing all the players together. “I hope we can . . . at a high level set expectations on both sides . . . set expectations on the vendor community of what public safety expects out of their network, and then setting public safety’s expectations also of this is what’s available within the standard and in the technology. . . . It’s bringing these two groups together for the very first time. Some of these vendors have never interacted directly with public safety and now they’re looking to be partners with them in this nationwide network. So it’s exciting times.”
Public safety leaders say the demonstration network can be beneficial. “I think this is going to be very helpful,” said PSST Chairman Harlin McEwen, who attended last week’s meeting. The network will enable stakeholders “to try to get some of these lessons learned as early as possible,” he said. He also said the PSST is in the process of drafting a memorandum of understanding with PSCR representatives “so that we can have a cooperative . . . foundation for working together.”
Another attendee at last week’s meeting, Alan Caldwell, secretary-treasurer of the PSST and senior adviser-government relations for the International Association of Fire Chiefs, called the PSCR program “a very, very bright light inside the federal government to help local and state first responders.” He said the use of a demonstration network, followed by small-scale deployment of systems, “is the right way of dealing with any new technology.” Messrs. McEwen and Caldwell said they were pleased that D.C., which has deployed a broadband public safety system, would be part of the demonstration project.
NPSTC Chair Ralph Haller said the demonstration network will allow stakeholders “to get a good understanding of the capabilities of the equipment today, and hopefully what’s going to be online in the not-too-distant future.” NPSTC had recommended the establishment of a such a PSCR test facility.
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