Former Homeland Security chief calls for national public safety network
Tom Ridge, the former secretary of U.S. Homeland Security, is calling for the creation of a nationwide wireless public-safety network to operate in the 700 MHz band. “Why would we not — in a post 911 world — want to create a nationwide, broadband network for public safety users across the country?” he asks.Tom Ridge, the former secretary of U.S. Homeland Security, is calling for the creation of a nationwide wireless public-safety network to operate in the 700 MHz band. “Why would we not — in a post 911 world — want to create a nationwide, broadband network for public safety users across the country?” he asks.
Ridge supports a proposal being floated by Morgan O’Brien, co-founder of Nextel Communications, to use a portion of the 700 MHz band as a national broadband network for first responders and other public safety communications. The 700 MHz band is scheduled to be auctioned to commercial providers in 2008. Ridge argues it should, instead, be placed in a public trust.
“To be five and half years after 9/11 and be no further toward a national, broadband, interoperable communication system in my judgment is inexcusable,” Ridge told
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700 MGz has value in addressing first responder public safety applications but still has topology vulnerabilities compared to mesh network designs. The reason the emergency systems when down in Hurricane Katrina was due to the physical destruction of large radio towers and these radio centers requiring significant power and power backup. A video blog called anewnetwork.com has interviews from Chris Drake, former operations manager for the City of New Orleans Emergency Operations Center and Greg Meffert former CTO of the City of New Orleans. Their statements clearly explain what worked, what didn’t and what topologies will work in the future disasters.
700 MHz has its place in public safety but is not and indestructible infrastructure. Mesh designs can create networks from nothing by just having the public safety vehicles drive to the incident. The vehicles offer a continuous power plant to an interoperable broadband network while the mesh design connects and self heals the local network topology to the nearest backhaul. Even without available backhaul, 80% of emergency communication occurs within blocks of the incident. Why wait for 700 MHz when these indestructible mesh topologies are hear today?
Not having read the actual proposal, I cannot comment on its merits, EXCEPT that the idea of using a portion of the 700 MHz band as a national broadband network for first responders and other public safety communications is an EXCELLENT one. The 700 MHz band is perfectly compatible with MESH networking, and has much greater NLOS (non-line-of-sight) capability. What is missing is for the various radio modem companies (e.g., component and module vendors like Atheros, Ubiquiti Networks, and others) to make 700 MHz modules (especially miniPCI) that support the defacto standard MADWIFI driver, so they can be plugged into a wide variety of existing systems. Similar modules are already available for a number of other bands, including the 4.9 GHz (4900 MHz) public safety band (although 4.9 GHz has poorer NLOS performance than 700 MHz). Of course, no company manufacture and sell such components until the politics and approvals get worked out…