Subject: [NEXTEL-1] P/S radio interoperability woes major homeland securityissue

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 13:47:01 -0500

-------- Original Message --------
   From: "Lindsey, Mike" <[email-masked]>
Subject: P/S radio interoperability woes major homeland securityissue

I am a relatively new member of this board but I have been in the public
safety communications industry for almost 30 years.  We have built here at
the city of Tempe what we believe to be one of the best interoperability
platforms for public safety at a reasonable cost.  Tempe is a suburb that
helps make up the Phoenix Arizona metropolitan area. The interoperability
platform is built in a 20 ft trailer.  The heart of the system is built
around 4 different technologies that have been married together for optimal
functionality.  We started with the JPS ACU1000 unit.  We tied in 3 800Mhz
radios, 3 VHF radios, and 2 UHF radios into the system.  We then took a
unique Satcom platform built around Iridium that provides 4 Satcom lines to
the trailer.  The unique part is that the unit drops the 4 Satcom units out
as plain old telephone service.  This means we can now take any old analog
phone set and tie it to the Satcom.  What we did was go out and find another
unique system of cordless phones.  This cordless phone system is a 4 line
PBX system with 4 line input and up to 36 long range cordless phones.  The
long range cordless phones have an advertised range of up to 8.8 miles from
the base unit.  I do not think that would be applicable in a city
environment but we have used them up to 2 miles away from the trailer with
no problems.  These phones also have the capability of working as 2 way
radios independent of the base unit and has text messaging.  We now tied the
ACU1000 and the Satcom unit together so we could provide phone service to
and from the radio network independent of any land line system.  This
solution now provides the ability for radios in the combined radio networks
to make outgoing calls.  More importantly anyone with the proper phone
number and security code can access the radio network and join the
conversation.  This gives commanders and chiefs the ability to be in contact
with the incident from anywhere in the world.  The next step we took was to
add 2 way data Satcom to the trailer.  The download speed of the Satcom unit
is right at T-1 speed.  We dropped this into a wireless LAN system to
support on-scene need for Internet access.  This was important to the Hazmat
people for access into Hazmat data bases.  We can also take live video from
the scene and slap an IP address on it and send it back into our Emergency
Operations Center.  I could literally right a book on the functionality of
this system but with respect to the list I would be happy to provide
pictures and  more technical info off line if anyone is interested.

Michael D. Lindsey
Communications Network Supervisor
480-350-8836
480-250-5494 Cell
[email-masked]