Provinces plan launch of new emergency communication networks

Saskatchewan is one of the first provinces in Canada to switch to a new emergency communication network to facilitate inter-agency communication. About 80 per cent of the fire, ambulance and police organizations that formerly used SaskTel’s FleetNet radio network for emergency communications are in the process of switching over to a massive new radio network. The new network will cover 95 per cent of the province's population, making it one of the largest terrestrial wireless networks ever constructed. Built on a SaskPower/RCMP radio system, Saskatchewan’s new Provincial Public Safety Telecommunications Network (PPSTN) is taking on new tenants as municipalities across the province sign up. Duane McKay, Saskatchewan’s fire commissioner and director of emergency response, said in an interview that so far, out of approximately 530 fire, police and ambulance organizations, about 400 are in the process of switching to the new system, and just over 100 are fully operational. The province plans to move all FleetNet users to the PPSTN by the end of December, McKay said. McKay said Saskatchewan needed a new radio system because SaskTel plans to decommission FleetNet. It was also difficult for emergency services to communicate with one another on the old network. The PPSTN is a radio-repeater system with 240 towers connected through a computer network. It employs the P-25 networking standard—a protocol designed to support radio interoperability. Saskatchewan is testing the new system by using two different radio manufacturers’ products from Harris Corp. and Motorola Inc. McKay said the protocol is designed to enable organizations to choose from various vendors’ radios to suit their specific communication requirements. But Saskatchewan isn't the only province in the process of launching a new network. “All of the provinces will be looking at replacing their radio systems at approximately the same time,” McKay said. Alberta is planning to launch a system similar to Saskatchewan's, and New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island are also planning new systems. Known as the Maritime Radio Communications Initiative, the participating organizations, which include the New Brunswick Provincial Wireless Initiative and the PEI Office of Public Safety, released in August a request for proposals for a vendor to build the new network, said Diane Bishop, a spokeswoman with the New Brunswick provincial government. McKay said many regions bought their existing systems about 15 to 20 years ago. Radio networks are designed to last about that long before they’re superseded by better technology, he said. The City of Weyburn, Sask. was the first municipality on PPSTN. Howard Georgeson, chief of police with the Weyburn Police Service, said in an interview that FleetNet worked fine but it didn’t support communication between organizations. Coordinating communications among fire, police and ambulance used to be cumbersome, Georgeson said. In the past, they communicated with each other by cellphone—or they’d initiate a radio exchange so each organization could communicate with the others. “That took some planning,” Georgeson said. “It resulted in a little bit of a delay in the time we had to deal with the emergency.” At the start of the PPSTN trial, there were a few teething pains. “On day one, we couldn’t even transmit out of our own station or fire hall,” Georgeson said. And the police discovered some network dead zones at first, but none that would endanger the service’s ability to protect citizens, Georgeson said. The network issues were to be expected, he added, noting that over time Weyburn’s emergency and law enforcement groups helped the network implementation team hone the placement of towers and the direction of antennas to ensure overall coverage. Fred Palidor, head of Palidor Radio Communications Consultants Ltd. in North Vancouver, said cost is often one of the challenges associated with building new emergency radio networks, along with convincing municipalities to join. “There generally isn’t enough money to meet everybody’s needs,” he said. For instance, Palidor recently worked with an Ontario municipality that was considering joining Ontario’s provincial radio network. But the municipality wanted the ability to encrypt communication across the network, and the provincial system didn’t offer that. In the end, Palidor recommended that the municipality refrain from signing onto the provincial network. Part of the problem has to do with the way these networks are built. Palidor said high-level state and provincial bodies usually start radio network projects, but they may not meet the needs of individual municipalities. McKay said that in Saskatchewan’s case the province created a radio-purchase program to help offset the costs of switching. Saskatchewan is paying 50 per cent of the costs of new radios, bringing the price per device down from $90 to about $40. The subsidy program wraps up at the end of 2010. The province also gives two radios to fire, police and ambulance organizations for free. In total, Saskatchewan spent $130 million to build the network. news@thewirereport.ca

Provinces plan launch of new emergency communication networks

News | October 12, 2010

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