Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Wireless revolution- Fire Chief, Dec 1, 2002

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 02:34:11 -0500

Wireless revolution

 Ken Branson, Correspondent

 Fire Chief, Dec 1, 2002

 Picture a perfect world — well, not perfect exactly; let's say there's enough
imperfection around to cause fires. But that single
 flaw aside, imagine a world where all of the firefighters arriving at an incident could
talk loudly and clearly to each other.

 Even deep in the fireground, firefighters who can't see two feet ahead could know exactly
what's supposed to be in the building
 through heads-up visor displays that show a computer-generated image of every floor.
Plus, all the apparatus arrive in time to
 fight the fire effectively, because each vehicle has in it an accurate digital map that
was sent from the communications center to
 a ruggedized laptop.

 As we used to say to our parents on long car trips, are we there yet? Well, no. Should we
even be headed there? Or are there
 some other places we should head first?

 Advances from adversity

 Last year's terrorist attacks gave a boost to the visibility of wireless communications
in general, and to fireground communications
 in particular. Federal grants are available to state and local governments to improve
their communications systems, and new
 wireless applications have been announced by some unlikely developers.

 Consider, for instance, the “tooth phone,” under development by Barry Mersky, a dentist
from Bethesda, Md. The phone is a
 two-way wireless communications device fitted to a dental retainer. Earlier this year,
Mersky showed his invention to the
 Homeland Security and Defense Symposium in Atlantic City, N.J. Mersky hopes to market his
invention to first responders who
 work in high-noise environments. Reportedly, the device converts vibrations of the teeth
into voice signals that can be heard in the
 100dB range. Mersky told reporters the device would probably cost $200 per unit.

 The same trade show featured the First Responder, a modified Chevy Suburban SUV capable
of assuring interoperability
 between fire, police and emergency medical services at an emergency scene. Raytheon
developed the vehicle, which reportedly
 sells for $225,000.

 “There's a lot of really cool technology out there,” says Billy Goldfeder, a battalion
chief in the Loveland-Symmes (Ohio) Fire
 Department near Cincinnati. “But a lot of it doesn't really work very well.”

 Goldfeder's fireground communications sights are set a bit lower than issuing
firefighters tooth phones or SUV-based
 communications centers. He just wants to be able to talk to his firefighters at the
fireground, clearly and reliably, every time. His
 pet peeve is with people who purchase communications systems for fire departments and
then deploy them without testing them
 fully.

 Personally, Goldfeder leans toward old-fashioned, analog communications systems that work
all the time. He is skeptical about
 digital technology, and most of the new wireless communications products are digital.
“I'm told it's a work in progress,” he says.
 “Work in progress? Why the hell are you giving me a work in progress? We're
firefighters.”

 For Goldfeder, voice is the key application, and it has to work every time. Firefighters
expect rigs to start every time there's a
 fire, Goldfeder reasons. Why expect less from wireless communications equipment?

 Goldfeder's own department has Nextel wireless phones for “command conversations,” plus
800MHZ digital portable radios “that
 work fairly well,” backed up with 154MHZ analog radios. “We can switch between analog and
digital,” Goldfeder says. “But
 when do you do it?”

 Worst-case scenario

 Goldfeder's bad dream runs like this: Firefighters arrive on scene with their radios in
digital mode, able to communicate with each
 other and their dispatcher. However, as they set to work, they find themselves fading out
on each other, and their incident
 commander instructs them to switch to analog mode. The dispatcher, still digital, is now
out of the loop, but the firefighters can
 speak clearly to each other. All goes well as long as … well, as long as all goes well.

 At this point the firefighters can talk to each other, but they can't always see each
other. In some smoky corner of the burning
 building, a firefighter finds himself in real trouble and doesn't have time to say, “Hey,
I'm in trouble! Help!” He also isn't entirely
 sure where he is, and neither his comrades nor his commander are sure, either. He hits
the panic button on his radio, but because
 he's in analog mode and the button is digital, no one hears him.

 If he has the presence of mind to return to digital mode, the dispatcher may hear him.
But how will the dispatcher get in touch
 with the firefighters at the scene, who are still in analog mode? The endangered
firefighter may be left to rely on the strength of
 his own voice, calling for help in what Raytheon would call a “high-noise environment.”

 “I've heard that exact scenario,” says John Anderson, senior safety manager for public
safety and major accounts at Kenwood
 Communications Corp., in Newberry Park, Calif., a major supplier of wireless
communications equipment to fire departments.

 “There are solutions to that problem,” Anderson says, noting that the problem is not
between analog and digital technology, but
 with the proper installation of the system backing up a department's portable radios.

 “If the radio system is not reliable, the solution is a mobile repeater in the fire
truck, close to the building,” Anderson says.
 “[Firefighters] can communicate with the truck and then out to the dispatch center
reliably.”

 Cool, but at a cost

 Stephen Adler of Motorola says that plenty of new technology, including the heads-up
displays referred to earlier, is commercially
 available, but that the fire service has not kept pace with the emergency medical service
in deploying it.

 “There was a lot of money available in federal grants, beginning in the 1970s and running
into the early 1980s, and the medical
 side took full advantage of it,” he says. “The fire service lagged a bit behind, at least
in this country.”

 Steven Foley, senior fire service safety specialist at the National Fire Protection
Association, in Quincy, Mass., thinks Adler
 overestimates the technological gap between the fire and emergency medical services,
pointing out that, in most large American
 cities, the two services are part of the same bureaucracy and often use the same
communications equipment and network.

 However, Foley concedes that fire departments in the United States are behind European
countries. For example, that same
 heads-up display technology is available and in use in many parts of Europe.

 “My friends in the Strathclyde Fire Brigade in Scotland have that capacity now in their
apparatus, and it gives them a complete
 picture of the building,” Foley says. “A lot of that is available from the building
department.”

 The technology may be available, but there still are technical barriers to its
deployment. For example, mapping information can be
 downloaded to a laptop in the responding vehicle to help firefighters locate the right
address or to a firefighter's heads-up display
 to help him find his way around the building.

 Speed and cost are at issue, however. The fact that the data exists on paper or in a
computer database doesn't mean that making
 it available will be easy, or cheap.

 “The technology is there, but the speed of moving the data is rather slow,” says Denny
Blaine, executive vice president of sales
 and marketing at E.F. Johnson & Co., based in Waseca, Minn. “We're trying to push all the
data out to a fire apparatus, but
 trying to push all that down to the apparatus might take as long as getting to the fire
itself.

 “It's also costly. You need receiving equipment, screens and so on, to boost the data.
It's costly for them (fire departments) to
 upgrade their equipment. The other thing is, sometimes building mapping is a fairly new
technology, and not all commercial
 buildings would be mapped in an area.”

 Fiefdom borders

 When Foley goes out to a Strathclyde pub for a pint with the lads, they have trouble
believing that, in the United States, the
 firefighters can't always talk to the police, or the neighboring department, or even to
each other. But Foley has no trouble
 believing it. That's there, he explains, and this is here.

 “The United Kingdom fire service is pretty regimented, and it's a national system,” he
says. “They have national standards, and
 there's no deviation. Here in the States, people go out and do what they want without
thinking about the big picture. Doing things
 with your neighboring fire department, well, you should be able to talk to them. It's not
a technical issue; it's a fiefdom issue.”

 There are jurisdictional issues that tug wireless communications back and forth across
state and county lines, and across
 bureaucratic boundaries as well. A report compiled for New York City by management
consulting firm McKinsey & Co. and
 published over the summer revealed that New York's fire and police departments couldn't
always talk to each other at incidents.

 In addition, the report pointed out that only about 10% of New York City's 2,000
high-rise buildings (buildings more than seven
 stories high) were equipped with repeaters to aid radio signals up and down the building.
The World Trade Center towers,
 completed in the mid-1970s, were not among them.

 The terrorist attacks of last September have made it easier to see the big picture, but
there has been an effort under way for
 years to encourage a unified national standard for emergency services communication
called Project 25.

 Project 25, the international joint effort of the mobile communications industry and
public safety officials to set interoperability
 standards, has received a boost in public visibility during the past year. Since 1989, it
has provided the arena in which technical
 arguments have been thrashed out, and its executive director, Craig Jorgensen, has
predicted that its standards may be ready in
 2004.

 Like all communications standards efforts, Project 25 suffers from its sheer size and
from the scope and complexity of its work.
 Its goal is to “promote the design, manufacture, the evolution and the universal and
effective use of technologies stemming from
 the APCO/NAST/FED Project 25 process.” All three major mobile and portable radio vendors
— Kenwood, Motorola and E.F.
 Johnson — and many smaller vendors, are involved in the process. But some are more
enthusiastic than others. After all, what
 happens to a manufacturer that commits to build Project 25 equipment and networks if the
standard becomes outdated?

 Nonetheless, Motorola offers an entire set of wireless network equipment for emergency
services, and all of the units are
 compatible with Project 25. And IBM recently announced its intention to build a public
safety wireless data network that will
 allow more than 40 local, state and federal agencies in the Washington, D.C., area to
communicate via real-time messaging.

 Planning issues

 Goldfeder says it's a good idea to be interoperable with other agencies and neighboring
departments, but he doesn't think such a
 goal is as easily attainable in the United States as it was, apparently, in Europe. He's
not sure that national standards would be a
 panacea, either.

 “We're the United States, and that doesn't make us great or wonderful or better or worse,
but by our nature, we're independent,”
 he says. “European governments are much more into central purchasing, much more
consolidated. I would say that bigger is not
 necessarily better, and consolidation can lead to large bureaucracy.”

 NFPA's Foley points out that interoperable does not necessarily mean transparent. “A lot
of people talk about interoperability, but
 I can tell you that the FBI or the Secret Service doesn't want Joe Firefighter on their
encrypted radio,” Foley says.

 Goldfeder thinks that wireless communications fail on the fireground because the people
responsible for purchasing the equipment
 pay too much attention to the technology or a seemingly attractive price for the
equipment, and not enough attention to simple,
 common-sense things like testing. “Just crummy planning on the part of the people who
build the systems,” he says.

 Surprisingly, at least one vendor agrees with Goldfeder. An executive with a major
vendor, who asked that neither he nor his firm
 be identified, says that having firefighters switch back and forth between digital and
analog modes is a bad idea; a network, he
 says, should be one thing or the other.

 “There is a direct system, or radio to radio, and a wide-area system, which is repeaters
on hilltops and buildings,” the executive
 says. “Imagine a fireman inside a building transmitting out 50 yards to the truck or to
other firemen in the building. That's direct.
 The breakdown we're describing is a fireman trying to transmit on the wide-area system,
trying to hit a repeater on a hilltop 20
 miles away.”

 The answer, the executive says, is to consider the system as a whole, to build more
repeaters closer together and to train
 firefighters thoroughly in the use of their equipment. With a well — thought-out mix of
repeaters (including mobile ones) and
 rugged radios, firefighters wouldn't have to remember which mode they were in.

 Of megahertz and moolah

 There are two resources whose availability may have a great deal to say about how fire
departments communicate in the future:
 spectrum and money.

 Foley points out that the Federal Communications Commission, late last year, opened the
700MHZ band for use by emergency
 services. “That will be a big window of opportunity for the public safety community,”
Foley says.

 The other resource, money, may be more of a problem. For example, as it tries to improve
the communications capability of its
 emergency services and address the issues raised in the McKinsey report, New York City
will probably have less money with
 which to do so this year. A sluggish national economy and the damage the terrorist
attacks perpetrated on the city's own
 economy has Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the city council talking about tax hikes and
budget shortfalls. New York's
 experience is not unique.

 And what about firefighters in the rest of the country? Foley points out that 80% of the
fire departments in the United States
 serve 5,000 or fewer people. Many of those departments are staffed by volunteers who must
find the money to keep their
 training and equipment up to date. They find it in municipal and county budgets, such
state and federal grants as they can scare
 up, pancake breakfasts, and bingo.

 “A lot of those departments struggle to keep up their apparatus and stuff,” Foley says.
“USFA grants are available for
 communications equipment. This year, there was $300 million in FIRE Act grant money. The
proposal is to raise it to $900
 million. That's a drop in the bucket. Law enforcement gets $33 billion.”

 For Goldfeder, the main priority is straightforward: to be able to communicate clearly
and reliably on the fireground. Once on the
 fireground, he doesn't much care whether his communications technology is analog or
digital, where the money to buy it came
 from or how far apart the repeaters are. For him, the question is the one asked partly in
jest by the tv commercial for a wireless
 telecom company: “Can you hear me now?”

 Ken Branson is a freelance writer.

 Will headsets help?

 Dan Soulier doesn't miss much. But there's a lot he doesn't hear.

 “I have certifiably lost 68% [hearing] in my left ear and 54 in my right, related to the
job,” says Soulier, deputy chief of
 administration in the Harrisburg (Pa.) Fire Department. “I have lost the middle range,
where normal conversation goes on. It got
 so that I'd go out to dinner with my family, and I'd have trouble hearing what my
children were saying, but silverware clanging at
 the next table was like nails on a chalkboard.”

 Soulier got hearing aids a couple of years ago “and now, I'm hearing things I haven't
heard in years,” he says. He believes his
 younger colleagues will save their hearing and do their jobs better because they use
headsets to communicate.

 Harrisburg incident commanders, pump operators, truck operators and rooftop firefighters
wear headsets. These headsets permit
 the firefighters to talk to each other and to their commanders, and to hear each other,
without having to pick through extraneous
 noise. Soulier is surprised that more departments don't use them.

 “My typical picture of an incident commander is of (someone) with the lapel mike up to
his ear, using the antenna (of the portable
 radio) as a pointer,” Soulier says.

 Not surprisingly, a similar image is in the minds of people who make and sell headsets
and intercoms. Their pitch to fire
 departments is that headsets, attached to mobile or portable radios, are a relatively
easy way to make sure that orders are clearly
 understood, that the right questions find the right answers, and that incident
commanders, truck and pump operators can hear their
 colleagues speak and themselves think. Otherwise, they contend, everyone at a fire scene
is reduced to shouting, cranking up the
 volume on his or her radio, and straining to hear through the static — all in vain.

 “Turn the volume of the speaker up, and you just add noise,” says Gary Stamm, northeast
regional sales manager for David Clark
 Co. of Worcester, Mass., which makes headsets, intercoms and adapters.

 A headset might be attached by a cord to a mobile radio in a truck, or it might be
attached by an adapter to a portable radio
 carried by a firefighter. The headset has two big ear cups, or domes, and a microphone
protruding from one of the domes to the
 firefighter's mouth.

 Will Antunes, corporate sales manager for FireCom Inc., in Portland, Ore., has a clear
idea of who should use his company's
 products.

 “On-scene safety officers, incident commanders, etc. trying to hear the radio properly,”
Antunes says. “They're keeping an ear
 open to hear people trying to call them. Meanwhile, people are walking up and shouting to
them, there are sirens going, and the
 fire itself makes a lot of noise. A lot of those problems can be solved with a simple
headset. It cuts out high-frequency noise by
 about 24dB.”

 Antunes, Stamm and their competitors run into some resistance from potential customers.

 “In the industry, there's often machismo that says, ‘Oh, well, it's loud, but we're big
boys and we can handle it,’” Antunes says.
 “There's great apathy for hearing protection…. Largely it's gone unnoticed.”

 Stamm finds that many departments have other priorities.

 “I think in a lot of cases they still feel that headsets and intercoms are luxury items,
rather than necessities, and also they would
 rather have their trucks adorned with embellishments — more lights and chrome bells and
that sort of thing,” he says.

 Stamm is reminded of his main obstacle when he approaches a potential client at a trade
show. “The typical scenario is, you'll
 speak to some older [firefighter] at a fire show, and he'll say, ‘Huh?’”

http://firechief.com/magazinearticle.asp?magazinearticleid=162004&magazineid=157&siteID=26&releaseid=10764&mode=print

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---

From: "Mabardy, Mark" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 09:51:33 -0500

Why not have the digital/analog repeater mounted on a ladder/snorkel and even if the aerial lift is not needed, raise it because the vehicle mobile radio extenders/repeaters antennas for the event are mounted on the basket?
Food for thought, thinking out loud!  Have everything repeated in analog, on the analog fire ground freq, repeated back to EOC (dispatch) and of course have the digital talk group (fire ground) repeated so there won't be any fade.  If you need another snorkel/ladder go ahead and strike the alarm to fight the fire or to supply radio assistance.
 
Have all snorkels/ladders vehicles in the department equipped with the repeater packages so a department doesn't have to rely on only one snorkel/ladder.  Boy what a use of resources!
 
Mark Mabardy
Contracts & Construction Administrator
Wireless & Radio Systems, MA-630
7-0090 (o)
7-8559 (f)
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Marcel [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Friday, December 20, 2002 2:34 AM
To: WFHSG; [email-masked]
Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Wireless revolution- Fire Chief, Dec 1, 2002
 
Wireless revolution

Fire Chief, Dec 1, 2002

Picture a perfect world - well, not perfect exactly; let's say there's enough
imperfection around to cause fires. But that single
flaw aside, imagine a world where all of the firefighters arriving at an incident could
talk loudly and clearly to each other.

Advances from adversity

Consider, for instance, the "tooth phone," under development by Barry Mersky, a dentist

"There's a lot of really cool technology out there," says Billy Goldfeder, a battalion
chief in the Loveland-Symmes (Ohio) Fire
Department near Cincinnati. "But a lot of it doesn't really work very well."

Personally, Goldfeder leans toward old-fashioned, analog communications systems that work
all the time. He is skeptical about
digital technology, and most of the new wireless communications products are digital.
"I'm told it's a work in progress," he says.
"Work in progress? Why the hell are you giving me a work in progress? We're
firefighters."

Goldfeder's own department has Nextel wireless phones for "command conversations," plus
800MHZ digital portable radios "that
work fairly well," backed up with 154MHZ analog radios. "We can switch between analog and
digital," Goldfeder says. "But
when do you do it?"

Worst-case scenario

speak clearly to each other. All goes well as long as ... well, as long as all goes well.

At this point the firefighters can talk to each other, but they can't always see each
other. In some smoky corner of the burning
building, a firefighter finds himself in real trouble and doesn't have time to say, "Hey,
I'm in trouble! Help!" He also isn't entirely
sure where he is, and neither his comrades nor his commander are sure, either. He hits
the panic button on his radio, but because
he's in analog mode and the button is digital, no one hears him.

his own voice, calling for help in what Raytheon would call a "high-noise environment."

"I've heard that exact scenario," says John Anderson, senior safety manager for public
safety and major accounts at Kenwood
Communications Corp., in Newberry Park, Calif., a major supplier of wireless
communications equipment to fire departments.

"There are solutions to that problem," Anderson says, noting that the problem is not
between analog and digital technology, but
with the proper installation of the system backing up a department's portable radios.

"If the radio system is not reliable, the solution is a mobile repeater in the fire
truck, close to the building," Anderson says.
"[Firefighters] can communicate with the truck and then out to the dispatch center
reliably."

Cool, but at a cost

"There was a lot of money available in federal grants, beginning in the 1970s and running
into the early 1980s, and the medical
side took full advantage of it," he says. "The fire service lagged a bit behind, at least
in this country."

"My friends in the Strathclyde Fire Brigade in Scotland have that capacity now in their
apparatus, and it gives them a complete
picture of the building," Foley says. "A lot of that is available from the building
department."

"The technology is there, but the speed of moving the data is rather slow," says Denny
Blaine, executive vice president of sales
and marketing at E.F. Johnson & Co., based in Waseca, Minn. "We're trying to push all the
data out to a fire apparatus, but
trying to push all that down to the apparatus might take as long as getting to the fire
itself.

"It's also costly. You need receiving equipment, screens and so on, to boost the data.
It's costly for them (fire departments) to
upgrade their equipment. The other thing is, sometimes building mapping is a fairly new
technology, and not all commercial
buildings would be mapped in an area."

Fiefdom borders

"The United Kingdom fire service is pretty regimented, and it's a national system," he
says. "They have national standards, and
there's no deviation. Here in the States, people go out and do what they want without
thinking about the big picture. Doing things
with your neighboring fire department, well, you should be able to talk to them. It's not
a technical issue; it's a fiefdom issue."

Like all communications standards efforts, Project 25 suffers from its sheer size and
from the scope and complexity of its work.
Its goal is to "promote the design, manufacture, the evolution and the universal and
effective use of technologies stemming from
the APCO/NAST/FED Project 25 process." All three major mobile and portable radio vendors
- Kenwood, Motorola and E.F.
Johnson - and many smaller vendors, are involved in the process. But some are more
enthusiastic than others. After all, what
happens to a manufacturer that commits to build Project 25 equipment and networks if the
standard becomes outdated?

Planning issues

"We're the United States, and that doesn't make us great or wonderful or better or worse,
but by our nature, we're independent,"
he says. "European governments are much more into central purchasing, much more
consolidated. I would say that bigger is not
necessarily better, and consolidation can lead to large bureaucracy."

NFPA's Foley points out that interoperable does not necessarily mean transparent. "A lot
of people talk about interoperability, but
I can tell you that the FBI or the Secret Service doesn't want Joe Firefighter on their
encrypted radio," Foley says.

Goldfeder thinks that wireless communications fail on the fireground because the people
responsible for purchasing the equipment
pay too much attention to the technology or a seemingly attractive price for the
equipment, and not enough attention to simple,
common-sense things like testing. "Just crummy planning on the part of the people who
build the systems," he says.

"There is a direct system, or radio to radio, and a wide-area system, which is repeaters
on hilltops and buildings," the executive
says. "Imagine a fireman inside a building transmitting out 50 yards to the truck or to
other firemen in the building. That's direct.
The breakdown we're describing is a fireman trying to transmit on the wide-area system,
trying to hit a repeater on a hilltop 20
miles away."

firefighters thoroughly in the use of their equipment. With a well - thought-out mix of

Of megahertz and moolah

Foley points out that the Federal Communications Commission, late last year, opened the
700MHZ band for use by emergency
services. "That will be a big window of opportunity for the public safety community,"
Foley says.

"A lot of those departments struggle to keep up their apparatus and stuff," Foley says.
"USFA grants are available for
communications equipment. This year, there was $300 million in FIRE Act grant money. The
proposal is to raise it to $900
million. That's a drop in the bucket. Law enforcement gets $33 billion."

telecom company: "Can you hear me now?"

Will headsets help?

"I have certifiably lost 68% [hearing] in my left ear and 54 in my right, related to the
job," says Soulier, deputy chief of
administration in the Harrisburg (Pa.) Fire Department. "I have lost the middle range,
where normal conversation goes on. It got
so that I'd go out to dinner with my family, and I'd have trouble hearing what my
children were saying, but silverware clanging at
the next table was like nails on a chalkboard."

Soulier got hearing aids a couple of years ago "and now, I'm hearing things I haven't
heard in years," he says. He believes his
younger colleagues will save their hearing and do their jobs better because they use
headsets to communicate.

"My typical picture of an incident commander is of (someone) with the lapel mike up to
his ear, using the antenna (of the portable
radio) as a pointer," Soulier says.

volume on his or her radio, and straining to hear through the static - all in vain.

"Turn the volume of the speaker up, and you just add noise," says Gary Stamm, northeast
regional sales manager for David Clark
Co. of Worcester, Mass., which makes headsets, intercoms and adapters.

"On-scene safety officers, incident commanders, etc. trying to hear the radio properly,"
Antunes says. "They're keeping an ear
open to hear people trying to call them. Meanwhile, people are walking up and shouting to
them, there are sirens going, and the
fire itself makes a lot of noise. A lot of those problems can be solved with a simple
headset. It cuts out high-frequency noise by
about 24dB."

"In the industry, there's often machismo that says, 'Oh, well, it's loud, but we're big
boys and we can handle it,'" Antunes says.
"There's great apathy for hearing protection.... Largely it's gone unnoticed."

"I think in a lot of cases they still feel that headsets and intercoms are luxury items,
rather than necessities, and also they would
rather have their trucks adorned with embellishments - more lights and chrome bells and
that sort of thing," he says.

Stamm is reminded of his main obstacle when he approaches a potential client at a trade
show. "The typical scenario is, you'll
speak to some older [firefighter] at a fire show, and he'll say, 'Huh?'"

http://firechief.com/magazinearticle.asp?magazinearticleid=162004 <http://firechief.com/magazinearticle.asp?magazinearticleid=162004&magazineid=157&siteID=26&releaseid=10764&mode=print> &magazineid=157&siteID=26&releaseid=10764&mode=print

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