Change is inevitable. During the past 127 years, the fire service witnessed the transformation from the use of a fire alarm box to dispatch centers. The first fire alarm call box was put into service in the 1880s to telegraph a location code to the central fire station when the lever was pulled in the box. As technology progressed, the fire service actively transitioned to dispatch centers that would receive and disseminate calls for service all over a city, county or jurisdiction.

When and how the transition to 6.25 kilohertz will happen is anyone’s guess, but the FCC continues to remind licensees that the transition is still in the commission’s future plans.

In evaluating its options, the goal of every state should be to obtain the best possible network coverage for its first responders. The safety of first responders and the public must be the primary concern in evaluating the AT&T/FirstNet plan. To conduct a reasonably thorough examination, the governors and their teams must have access to the necessary financial, technical and legal information regarding AT&T’s commitments to deliver the NPSBN.

With FirstNet releasing most of the state plans this week, state officials should take advantage of the full time allowed to review their plans in order to help make the most informed and best decision for their states.

Years of questions and anticipation about the next chapter of FirstNet are coming to a close as the nation’s SPOCs and their respective teams prepare for the next leg of the nationwide public-safety broadband network.

Progress in next-generation 9-1-1 (NG 9-1-1) implementation is being made. Last December, the National 911 Program Office issued a 104-page report indicating that 21 states have emergency services IP networks (ESInets) deployed, with 10 of those states reporting that all of their public-safety answering points (PSAPs) are connected to an ESInet. An ESInet is a critical building block in the provisioning of NG 9-1-1 services, largely because it provides the underlying data transport network and the means of interconnecting PSAPs. Moreover, with an ESInet in place, public-safety agencies can leverage new and enhanced applications not possible with legacy 9-1-1 systems.

As the TETRA industry heads to Hong Kong this week for Critical Communications World (CCW), suppliers continue to innovate and release new products and services to help mission-critical communications users do their jobs safely and reliably.

As the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) board prepares to take its next steps in creating a nationwide data network for public safety, board members are opening the door to endless ideas and solutions that will promote public-safety communications.

A new U.S. president has been in office about a month and a half. The Washington political scene has changed dramatically, and how those changes will affect the mission-critical communications industry is still playing out.

Rolling out a nationwide public-safety broadband network is difficult and uncharted territory. The three countries that are likely the furthest along in developing Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks for public-safety agencies have one thing in common — they are delayed.