Public Safety Will Have Growing Use of New Tech, IEEE Told

of the iceberg,” the academic told an IEEE webinar Wednesday. Telecom systems are “massive,” with multiple vendors involved in building networks, said Susan Ronning, principal at Adcomm Engineering: “It’s not just a radio system. It’s not just a network.” Communication inside 911 call centers is “difficult,” with dispatchers talking to callers and first responders while also talking to each other, she said. New technologies are “great,” but operators have complicated jobs and new systems must be maintained, she said. “It’s not necessarily simple when you get too many technologies involved,” she said. “It’s great to have all these technologies, but there has to be a support team” and “it’s very difficult to find people to do this kind of work,” Ronning said. Growing complexity of emergencies in urban settings will require more use of technologies that let first responders collaborate, said Dean Skidmore, IoT+LTE Consulting Group principal consultant. Land-mobile radio, 5G and push-to-talk technologies are deployed and have to work together, he said. Sharing sensitive data across jurisdictions and agencies is difficult in urban areas, he said. Size, weight, ruggedness and battery life are important factors for devices used by first responders, said Narendra Mangra, consultant at GlobeNet. Devices have to be easy to use “to be able to get information very quickly,” he said. Coverage, capacity and service performance of networks are important to public safety, as is interoperability, he said.