Creation of next-gen public safety comms net should be managed by non-profit, says study

The next generation public safety communications network should be managed by a non-governmental, non-profit organization that could impartially reconcile the myriad standards and procedures affecting emergency responders nationwide, said a report by an independent government advisory committee.

It also recommended that such a network should take advantage of “assigned public safety spectrum.” Congress has been trying to get spectrum for a national public safety network for years, battling over whether to assign the spectrum directly to first responders or auction it off to communications companies, so they can share it with responders and manage its back-office functions.

Ina report released on Jan. 31, the Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology (VCAT), made several recommendations to the National Institute of Standards and Technology regarding creation of the next-generation public safety communications network.  The network should support voice, video and data transmissions, and ideally be at the disposal of all first responders—the medical, emergency, law enforcement or military personnel who are first on the scene of events that threaten public safety, said VICAT in a Jan. 31 statement.

NIST is researching supporting public safety communications and operates a testbed for the technology at its Boulder, CO, campus. VICAT said it has been holding meetings and collecting input from the communications and public safety communities, as well as the public, regarding the future network.

The report's authors said in the statement they hope the study’s release “will spawn further focused discussion and action to improve support for public safety response in the United States and elsewhere."

"Public safety service is among the most important functions that government provides," says Vint Cerf, chair of the VCAT and vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google. "In the 21st century, we have an opportunity to re-invent public safety communications, taking advantage of smart devices that use digital and packet-based communication technologies. This report is aimed at improving communication options available to first responders."

Creating a 21^st century public safety communications network, said VICAT, reaches across many geographical, jurisdictional and technological lines, involving federal, state and local agencies, as well as private organizations and even volunteers. All have different procedures, budgets and existing technologies that would need to be coordinated to create a communications solution for the entire country, it said.

With that in mind, the committee recommended that a non-governmental, non-profit organization be charged with development of standards that would support creation of the network, using NIST’s Smart Grid Interoperability Panel as a model. The Smart Grid panel includes representatives from a large number of sectors with an interest in the next-generation power grid. According to the report, "that panel has been an effective mechanism for serious work on the elaboration of standards and requirements and identification of useful specifications for Smart Grid devices."

The committee said it envisions an organization that can establish "frameworks for cooperation that can build on common planning, standards, technology, budgeting and practices."

The report concluded that public safety communications network should incorporate commercial technology where appropriate; extend commercial technology to achieve robustness and provide for backward compatibility or interoperability through standards adoption and/or development where feasible, including interoperation with existing and new 911 systems.

It also said the network should give high-priority to cost-effectiveness, ease of use and affordability and take advantage of Internet and other packet-based technologies to support multi-media communication and mobile ad hoc network formation;

It added that the network should incorporate assigned public safety spectrum and other data communication spectrum assignments and include opportunity for sharing where feasible.

The network should also incorporate strong, federated authentication and other security technology to positively identify and authorize personnel and equipment permitted in the system, said VICAT.