Public Safety

PISC Comments on Re-auction of D Block

Wireless Future — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 09:15:00 -0400

Letter to Chairman Martin Re: Reauction of D Block

Wireless Future — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 09:43:00 -0400

Crime or Punishment

Articles — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 19:28:00 -0500

Sacramento lawmakers are in a trap. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton will decide in little more than three months whether to set a population cap on the state’s vastly overcrowded prison system, potentially forcing the early release of thousands of convicted criminals. To keep the court at bay, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has asked the Legislature to approve billions in new prison construction money, and to consider revising sentencing and parole laws to put fewer criminals behind bars.

The trap is this: California voters want criminals locked up, as they demonstrated again last year when they overwhelmingly passed an initiative that toughened… more

From TV to Public Safety

Wireless Future — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 04:41:00 -0400

Abstract

The events surrounding Hurricane Katrina and the 9/11 attacks demonstrated that the communications systems used by first responders in the United States are not adequate to meet the challenges of a post-9/11 world. The U.S. system is based on assumptions that local agencies should have maximal flexibility at the expense of standardization and regional coordination, that commercial carriers and municipal systems have little role to play, that public safety should not share spectrum or network infrastructure, and that narrowband voice applications should dominate. Many programs have been proposed to incrementally improve public safety communications systems, but without any fundamental… more

Wireless Public Safety Data Networks Operating on Unlicensed Airwaves

Wireless Future — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 07:00:00 -0400

From the fire fighters who died on 9/11 to the rescue workers struggling to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, recent crises have demonstrated that the absence of reliable and interoperable voice and data communications among public safety agencies is an urgent national dilemma. While the need for voice interoperability among first responders is a fundamental and longstanding public safety issue that must be resolved, many communities across the nation have already begun to supplement their voice communication networks with wireless broadband data networks operating over unlicensed spectrum—most notably the 2.4 GHz “Wi-Fi” band.

These cutting-edge mobile high-speed data networks… more