Service Provider News Report

Network World's Service Provider News Report Newsletter, 04/18/07

Washington builds high-speed wireless network for first responders

By Carolyn Duffy Marsan

Washington D.C. is building a state-of-the-art broadband data network for public safety agencies that offers a glimpse into the future of wireless communications.

The District of Columbia’s Regional Wireless Broadband Network (RWBN) will be the nation’s first interoperable broadband network built in the 700 MHz spectrum. The network will provide real-time data and video to 30,000 first responders in what's known as the National Capital Region.

"This broadband data network is a very important step toward public safety moving to the next generation of public safety communications," says Robert LeGrande, interim CTO for the District of Columbia.

The new 700 MHz data network will supplement the voice-only Land Mobile Radio (LMR) equipment that public safety agencies in the region use today. The new network will support the transmission of e-mail as well as images, real-time video and other multimedia services.

The new network is being built using commercial technology. In March, Alcatel-Lucent and LGS, its government services arm, won a five-year contract worth up to $110 million to deploy the network.

"We’re taking commercial technologies, and we’re creatively and innovatively bringing them into a new marketplace," says Ed Bursk, chief marketing officer for LGS. "We’re bringing our government customers significant benefits not only in cost savings but also in performance and…reliability."

Andy Smith, director of public safety at LGS, says the Washington D.C. network is opening a new market for wireless equipment vendors in the area of broadband public safety networks.

"We’re taking a standardized, mature, commercial technology and bringing it into the public safety domain," Smith says. "We're leveraging the economics that exists at the terminal level, which brings down the cost…This opportunity really is the beginning of a new market for all of us in terminals and infrastructure."

Washington D.C. is at the forefront of interoperable wireless communications for public safety agencies.

Interoperability is tricky for the region, which spans two states – Virginia and Maryland – plus the District of Columbia, along with many counties and cities including Arlington, Va., Alexandria, Va., Rockville, Md. and Gaithersburg, Md.

The National Capital Region has 19 municipal, district, state and federal jurisdictions involved in protecting the 4.2 million people living in the area. All of these jurisdictions purchase and operate their own communications systems.

The various public safety agencies in the region have been working on interoperable communications since the early 1980s, when a p*** crashed into the 14th Street Bridge over the Potomac River separating the District of Columbia from Northern Virginia. This incident highlighted the need for interoperable voice communications.

"We had interoperable communications even prior to the unforgettable and tragic events of 9/11," LeGrande says. "At the Pentagon, for the most part, we were interoperable" with LMR systems.

The new high-speed wireless network goes a step further by offering interoperable data as well as voice communications. The network will replace a hodgepodge of commercial wireless data services from carriers such as Verizon and Sprint Nextel that public safety agencies use today.

The new private network will allow users to receive data at 3.1Mbps. and to send data at 1.8Mbps. It takes advantage of technology being rolled out by commercial wireless carriers, in particular Alcatel-Lucent’s third-generation CDMA2000 1exEV-DO Revision A.

Alcatel-Lucent is providing the core network, including base stations, antennas, PC cards and PDAs. Alcatel-Lucent is working with AnyData, which provides CDMA modems for laptop and handheld devices, and Qualcomm, which provides 700 MHz capable CDMA chip sets.

The District of Columbia began working on a broadband wireless network four years ago. The goal of the project was data interoperability for public safety agencies in the region.

"Our operations are severely hampered [without] the ability to quickly retrieve data and do analysis on that data and then get that data to a user in a remote location in a secure way," LeGrande says.

He added that it was important for the public safety agencies to have a private broadband wireless network, rather than rely on commercial carriers.

"As soon as we evacuate the capital, the commercial networks will likely go down," LeGrade says. "We are, therefore, at risk not only by our inability to have disparate data sources integrated together, but we’re also at risk for how we’re going to get the data to the field in a crisis."

LeGrande says it’s too expensive for the region to continue upgrading its LMR networks, which are supplied by Motorola.

"There are 10,000 first responders within the District of Columbia including police, fire and others. If we would standardize on a commercial network, that would be $50 to $60 per user, per month. We can’t afford that," LeGrande says. "We saw the need to move to a private network to address all of these issues. We will migrate voice onto the network when it’s mature. We’ll get a reduction in cost so we can maximize the number of users. And we’ll have a uniform network that is interoperable with our partners."

The District of Columbia has been operating a pilot broadband wireless network called WARN for Wireless Accelerated Responder Network, which has 250 users. The pilot network uses technology from Flarion, which was acquired by Qualcomm in 2005. The new RWBN will replace WARN.

LeGrande says he hopes to have most of the District of Columbia’s new network up and running by the end of April, and that Arlington and Alexandria will be covered this summer.

"Our goal is to build out the network by 2009, but it’s a function of money," LeGrande says, pointing out that the money for the network is a grant from the Department of Homeland Security. "Our estimate is that this project will cost around $100 million. It sounds like a lot, but that is a significant reduction in the amount of money that it currently takes to build-out LMR in the same geography."

The new network won’t replace LMRs for voice communications immediately, but it could in the long run.

"Those LMRs are saving lives of our citizens right now. We’re not planning on yanking them out of our first responders’ hands," LeGrande says. But he admits that the new network "gives us a next-generation platform to migrate to."

One of the reasons Washington D.C. is the first to build a wireless public safety network in the 700 MHz spectrum is because that spectrum just became available for this use. In fact, the District of Columbia didn’t receive approval from the FCC to build out its network at 700 MHz until February 2007.

"We’ll be the first fully operational, multi-jurisdictional wireless broadband data network built within 700 MHz," LeGrande says.

Editor's Note: From Cisco Subnet: Free cable networking book up for grabs
Enter to win a copy of PacketCable Implementation by Jeff Riddel, published by Cisco Press. Also: read a free chapter of the book here and pose a question to the author in his blog here.

Carolyn Duffy Marsan is a senior editor with Network World and covers emerging Internet technologies and standards. Reach her at cmarsan@nww.com

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