The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
FIRST RESPONDERS GET CRUCIAL NEW TOOL
Though it’s not a renowned hightech hub, Brazos County, Texas, has become the showroom for what technology can do for police officers, paramedics and firefighters nationwide, through the newly created FirstNet wireless network.
What is FirstNet?
Developed in partnership with AT&T, FirstNet is a dedicated wireless network exclusively for first responders, enabling them to communicate in emergencies on a secure system built to handle massive amounts of data.
How it works
When Brazos sheriff ’s deputies entered a standoff with an armed man inside his home, they positioned four cars around the building and streamed live video through FirstNet back to their command center from their phones. When firefighters launched a swiftwater rescue recently, they were able to show it in real time through FirstNet to their supervisors. When a man tried to fraudulently register a stolen car, a patrol lieutenant was able to patch into the government center cameras through FirstNet and watch the crime in progress.
“It’s given us some incredible communication,” said Brazos Sheriff Chris Kirk, “that we’ve been able to put to good use. It makes us much more efficient.”
Steve Roderick, a volunteer emergency medical technician and AT&T official, said that when he first arrives on a trauma scene, he’s tasked with stabilizing a patient. “Having the ability to interact with somebody in a life-threatening situation,” by having video streamed through a body-cameratype device, “really allows me to do my job and better alerts the hospital so they can be prepared.”
How it started
The idea for FirstNet was long in gestation, beginning with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but has rapidly come to fruition in the year since AT&T won a contract
to build it for the federal government.
Former Boston police commissioner Ed Davis witnessed two major problems of emergency communication firsthand. On 9/11, police helicopters flying over the World Trade Center could see the danger of building collapse but could not reach firefighters inside the towers, who were using a different radio system. And after the Boston Marathon bombing, cellular networks were overwhelmed with traffic, and police could not communicate with each other, Davis said.
Though most people have long used smartphones, public safety lagged behind. Walkie-talkies and land-based dispatch systems remain the dominant communication system for police and fire departments. Officers and firefighters were using their private phones to help them do their jobs.
How it developed
The government agency was created after 9/11 to devise the interoperability of first responders, and then to enable video, data and text capabilities in addition to voice. In March 2017, FirstNet accepted AT&T’s $40 billion bid to build out the network. The governments of all 50 states
and the District of Columbia opted in, and in March of this year, the core network went live. Almost 650 agencies in 48 states have signed up, including Boston police and fire and the Texas Department of Public Safety.
The AT&T’s Global Network Operations Center is located deep underground on an AT&T campus in Bedminster, New Jersey. AT&T already had its global center in place, with dozens of analysts monitoring AT&T networks around the world. Now a separate, smaller group dedicated only to FirstNet has occupied work stations in the operations center.
First responder reaction
Early reviews of FirstNet’s interoperability are good. Mike Newburn, communications technology manager for Fairfax County, Virginia, said that when Fairfax’s Urban Search and Rescue Team went to Houston during Hurricane Harvey last summer, “they didn’t notice any impact on their devices; they weren’t ever knocked out. It helped them.”
One concern that public safety leaders expressed was that the network would not adequately cover rural areas. But Scott
Agnew, an assistant vice president of AT&T, said FirstNet will reach 99 percent of the country. And for smaller departments that do not have communications budgets, FirstNet is allowing individuals who are certified first responders to obtain from any of AT&T’s retail stores the sim cards needed to join the network for their own phones.
What’s next?
There are still technologies for FirstNet to conquer. Integrating it into dispatch centers is a likely possibility. Programmers also are considering how to integrate body-worn cameras into FirstNet, so that officers or firefighters can have their hands free while streaming video back to commanders.
There remains a competition for customers, even though all 50 states and the District opted into FirstNet. Individual agencies must decide whether to join, and they can still go with other companies such as Verizon, which did not bid for the FirstNet contract but served 70 percent of the nation’s public safety agencies. Verizon is building its own dedicated public safety network, which it says will complement FirstNet.