Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Police grapple with impact of CDPD network shutdown

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 12:25:25 -0500

Police Grapple
With CDPD Roadblock

Anticipated Shutdown Of Network
Leaves Officers With Complex Issues

By Brad Smith
November 18, 2002
Wireless Week

Oakland Police Officer Inez Ramirez has 37 laptop computers
intended for use by the city's motorcycle police. Each of the
Panasonic Toughbooks has a Sierra Wireless modem so the officers
can use the laptops to remotely check license plates, outstanding
warrants and other information.

But Ramirez, like many other technology workers in public safety
agencies, has a problem. The equipment the Oakland police bought
last spring was designed for the AT&T Wireless cellular digital
packet data network and that network is going away.

CDPD has been a mainstay of wireless data communications for
public safety agencies and for other enterprise users such as
mobile sales forces and fleet management. It is limited in its
coverage outside major metropolitan areas, but that has been fine
for metro police work.

The two main CDPD providers are AT&T Wireless and Verizon
Wireless. Neither will divulge the number of public safety users
on their networks, but it is believed to be sizable. About the
only alternative in the past has been private radio networks,
which have not been seen as viable carriers for data-oriented
tools such as squad car laptops.

AT&T Wireless has been letting its CDPD customers know since last
summer that it will shut down the 7-year-old network June 30,
2004, and hopes to migrate them to its new GPRS network. The
carrier promises to "do right" by its public safety customers,
says spokesman Jeremy Pemble, but that hasn't lessened some of the
agencies' concerns.

Pemble says one of the reasons the carrier has given its 2004
shut-off date is so the agencies will be able to plan ahead. It
also gives AT&T Wireless time to work with the agencies to find
the right solutions.

"We will shut down in 2004, but we're using that time to educate
the community on the benefits of GPRS," he says. That includes the
broader coverage of the new network, data rates faster than CDPD's
19.2 kilobits per second, and the applications it can support.

"We understand there are concerns," he says, adding: "We're 100
percent committed to finding solutions for their concerns."

One of the concerns for the Oakland Police, Ramirez says, is CDPD
is "stable, tested and proven. With newer technologies, there are
issues like pricing and those sorts of things." He said he was
surprised that AT&T Wireless decided to abandon the technology and
its users, especially because public safety agencies have a
limited budget for equipment and needs its gear to last.

"Making a change like this can affect a lot of people, but it is
their (AT&T Wireless) business," he says. "We've talked with them
and are exploring our options. We do have some plans to migrate to
a new technology, but for now CDPD is our choice."

Like the Oakland Police, the City of Seattle still is deploying
CDPD. Stan Wu, the city's IT project director, says he wasn't
surprised that AT&T Wireless was going to pull the plug on CDPD,
but he was surprised that it would happen so quickly.

About 1,000 Seattle police officers have been trained to use CDPD,
primarily using in-vehicle laptops with plug-in modems. CDPD also
is being used by the city utility department.

When CDPD is turned off, Wu says, Seattle likely will migrate its
wireless data use to a carrier using either GPRS or CDMA2000
1XRTT. "We'll look at all the alternatives," he says, "but we have
not yet started exploring them. I know there are three or four
carriers here who offer something."

The primary cost for Seattle will be to swap out its CDPD modems
for whatever network the city chooses. There also could be access
charge issues, which Wu says he will negotiate.

Verizon Wireless also is studying the future of its CDPD network
and has not yet decided how long it will support it, according to
spokeswoman Andrea Linskey. But she says Verizon will continue its
CDPD coverage longer than the date given by AT&T Wireless.

"We do envision a time when we will migrate users to our CDMA2000
data offering," Lindsey says. "But it would be premature to
speculate when that will be."

Lindsey says more than 75 percent of Verizon's CDPD customers are
public safety agencies. Some of them contacted Verizon after
hearing AT&T Wireless' announcement and were assured Verizon has
no plans to pull the plug, she says.

Lt. Craig Meier, head of management information systems for the
Baltimore Police Department, says he was told by Verizon that its
CDPD network would be live for at least five more years. Verizon
has told him it will not be spending any more research and
development money on the technology.

Meier says he knows that Verizon's new CDMA2000 1X network
provides faster data rates than CDPD, which will allow new
applications to be run. But he says the CDMA2000 data pricing now
is "very costly" compared to CDPD.

The Baltimore police wireless data solution was put together in a
partnership with Padcom, whose mobile data networking software is
designed to be used with various air interfaces. Meier says that
is one of the reasons Baltimore went with Padcom, knowing that it
could switch to CDMA, 802.11b or another technology that proved to
be a good choice.

Many public safety agencies are worried that data pricing by the
kilobit or minute would be too expensive for them and nearly
impossible to budget for, according to Mark Ferguson, director of
marketing and business development for Padcom. Ferguson and Chris
Bogdon, chief technical strategy for Padcom, agree that AT&T
Wireless and Verizon can't continue to support CDPD indefinitely.

"Public safety needs the network, the speeds are fine for them
because they don't need higher speeds, and so from their
perspective this is a very bad decision," Bogdon says. "From AT&T
Wireless' bandwidth and technology standpoint, it makes sense,
though. What they are doing is no different from Microsoft saying
it will not support Windows 98 with their new version of Windows."

There also is a technical issue in migrating public safety from
CDPD to either GPRS or CDMA2000, Ferguson says. CDPD uses static
Internet protocol addresses, while the other air interfaces have
dynamic IP addressing. Unlike CDPD, GPRS or CDMA2000 changes IP
addresses, something that can affect authentication on a secure
network.

"A lot of public agencies have mandated a single IP (for a single
user)," says Bogdon. "But with GPRS, anytime you turn on the
device you have a new IP address."

GSM/GPRS carriers could solve this by apportioning static IP
addresses to public safety agencies, which CDMA carriers cannot
do, or the agencies could use software from Padcom that provides a
single IP address even with a GPRS or CDMA network.

Bogdon says carriers may have to face another issue as they
migrate public safety agencies to GPRS or CDMA2000. Public safety
agencies use CDPD all day long, something that could affect
consumer usage of the GPRS or CDMA2000 networks.

These are all issues that AT&T Wireless-and eventually
Verizon-will have to work out as the CDPD era comes to a close.
AT&T Wireless' Pemble says the carrier likely will give public
safety agencies special treatment while trying to stay
competitive.

That would be good news for Seattle's Wu, who also thinks AT&T
Wireless may miss its cut-off date because public safety agencies
occupy a special status.

If push comes to shove, Wu says, "I don't think they will be so
rash as to cut off a police agency or a fire department."

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