Integrated radiocommunications gets top billing at APCO Canada annual conference

The goal of mapping out interoperability requirements for public safety radiocommunications in Canada has run into a snag as the various groups involved can’t come to a consensus. Both public safety organizations and the Radio Advisory Board of Canada (RABC) held meetings over the summer to try to hammer out some level of agreement (RoW, April 16/02). Discussions over the summer months didn’t result in the desired outcome, but one of Canada’s top radio frequency advisors to the government tells Report on Wireless that it may have been unrealistic to expect consensus. Ted Campbell, GM of the RABC, says that while the public safety community is not united, it may be unfair to believe that it should be. The process of creating interoperability requirements was kick-started in March of this year, when the RABC hosted a conference on the issue (RoW, April 3/02). "(The public safety community) reports to several different political levels – municipal, provincial and federal, and within federal there’s different ministries. Plus the requirements of an ambulance service are quite different from the requirements of the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency," Campbell explains. "It may be too much to hope that there is a single requirement or even a single family of requirements for all this." Despite the complex and multi-layer relationships among governments and public safety groups, which has been an obstacle in being able to reach a consensus, Campbell remains hopeful that the job can get done. "There may be a number of quite separate and distinct requirements which hopefully can be satisfied in a finite number of frequency bands with the inherent interoperability." However, Campbell insists much of the work to reach an agreement on interoperability requirements is procedural. While there must be common frequency bands and common signaling channels, "all that’s wasted if the procedures in use by fire department ‘A’ aren’t compatible with the procedures in use by police department ‘B’," he says. The need to implement integrated, interoperable and standardized radiocommunications networks for public protection and disaster relief (PPDR) operations will receive top billing at the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials Canada (APCO Canada) annual conference next month in Saskatoon. However, the issue can’t be dealt with in isolation since the 700 MHz spectrum range, which has been identified as a potential host band for such services, is currently being used by broadcasters for channels 60 to 69. Campbell says that a presentation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. will be particularly enlightening in this regard as the broadcasters face significant challenges in trying to meet the legitimate needs of the public safety community. The CBC is going to brief conference attendees on the technical aspects of the digital television transition allotment plan. Industry Canada is already looking into the matter of allocating a portion of the 700 MHz band for public safety operations (DGTP- 004-01; RoW, Oct. 15/01). The presentation will discuss the difficulties of the DTV transition plan regarding potential public safety organizations operating in the same band and some of the ways around those problems, Campbell explains. "The issue is incredibly complex because we need to find a way to give public safety usable spectrum, which can be shared on a common basis and which new style fully interoperable systems can use," he says. "We need to do that, while simultaneously allowing digital television to enter the market. It can’t be either or." Public safety groups aren’t limiting themselves to the 700 MHz band. Some groups have thrown their support behind an American initiative, which has identified 50 MHz of the upper 4 GHz band for common U.S./Canada public safety use (DGTP-001-02; RoW, May 27/02). APCO Canada, the City of Toronto Fire Services and Motorola Canada Ltd. all supported the designation of the 4940-4990 MHz band for public safety services. At next year’s World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-03), delegates from around the world will meet to discuss major international telecom issues and try to set policies for the next several years. One of the most significant debates will centre around Agenda Item 1.3, which will look at possibly allocating, on a globally harmonized basis, a single band for public safety disaster relief operations. Ottawa chooses interoperability for ambulance/police Campbell says there is also one key player that is often overlooked but has to be brought into the equation. The municipal budget director can sometimes be viewed as being as important as the ambulance dispatcher, for example. As was discussed in March at the National Public Safety Radiocommunications Conference, cost was one of the major hurdles that needed to be addressed. He cites the case in the city of Ottawa where a city staffer chose a particular company to implement a new radio system, rather than go through a lengthy bidding process. Since the company chosen to do the work also worked on the police dispatch system, the two systems would be interoperable. The city recently won the right to operate the ambulance dispatch service, which was previously operated by the provincial government.

Integrated radiocommunications gets top billing at APCO Canada annual conference

News | 09/30/2002 4:00 am EDT

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