Electro/Telecom Industry Trends

Project Director for Project 25 speaks about Improving Communication for the Public Safety Community

Issue Table of Contents

GEIA Forecasts Homeland Security Spending for FY2002-FY2007 TIA Continues to Work with National Lawmakers, Law Enforcement on Security Concerns Protecting the Critical Information Infrastructure IEEE Computer Society Launches Information Assurance Efforts Project MESA A Collaborative Effort Project Director for Project 25 speaks about Improving Communication for the Public Safety Community

"I was in Oklahoma working with the public safety community on Project 25 when the bombing occurred and the emergency managers had to get on radio and television and ask people to get off their cellular telephones, as they were hindering communication between public safety personnel. There was just too much air traffic all at once and, of course, land line telephone systems become clogged during any large-scale emergency," explains Craig Jorgensen, current Project Director for Project 25 and Co-chairman for Project 25 and Chairman of the Project MESA Service Specification Group (SSG).

The dilemma of ensuring that public safety personnel are able to communicate during an emergency is the catalyst behind the creation of TIA's Series 102, 902 and 905/Project 25, the U.S. standards effort geared toward the creation of new digital standards. Those standards are written to accommodate public safety's long-term needs for digital two-way radio communication between the various members of the public safety community. "Ensuring interoperability between the various departments is of the utmost importance," explains Jorgensen. "The departments need to be able to intercommunicate efficiently and in a secure mode during a disaster to effectively react or even avoid further infrastructure damage."

Project MESA, which was initiated in 1996, is a perfect example of just how far his experience has benefited the public safety communications effort. "Project MESA started out as two separate and distinct standards efforts, one in Europe called TETRA's Digital Access Wireless Systems (DAWS), and one in the United States, Project 25/34. After years of discussion between the Chair of TETRA/DAWS, Dr. Steffen Ring and the Project 25 Steering Committee, an agreement was reached for a cooperative effort," explains Jorgensen. "As we began to look at the creation of a global standard, we quickly realized we didn't have the resources to get it done in a timely manner," he continues. "We were fortunate to be able to work out an arrangement with TIA and ETSI to assist in accelerating and managing the new process."

"We met initially in 1989 and brought together a number of federal agencies, including the Defense Department's National Communications System (NCS), the National Security Agency (NSA), the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and others including APCO and NASTD," reflects Jorgensen. "We determined that we needed an organizational structure to run this Project and agreed to a schedule. We also selected the Project name as APCO Project 25, even though the resultant work products are known as simply Project 25 standards, to better reflect their broader work effort and acceptance." In April of 1991 the partnership between APCO Project 25 and TIA was formalized. Project 25 is now driven by a Steering Committee comprised of three representatives of federal agencies, four representatives from state government, and four representatives of the general public safety community. All actions in the Project 25 process must be approved by the Steering Committee. "Over time, the use of a Steering Committee has resulted in countless benefits to the users beyond the actual standards," comments Jorgensen. "Plus, by utilizing TIA's existing and independent standards policies and engineering manual we have been able to streamline the standards process."

The Project 25 standards include:

• TIA/EIA 102 Series, Telecommunications, Land Mobile Communications (APCO/Project 25)
• TIA/EIA 902, Digital Radio Technical Standards Public Safety Wideband Data Standard Project
• TIA/EIA 905 Series

"This partnership leverages the best information available from both the consumer side and the manufacturers side of the issue," says Jorgensen.

Project MESA is intended to create a suite of global standards for wideband high-speed wireless digital data applications that will embody voice, video, data, infrared signals, and a potpourri of other data services applications. It is intended that this high-speed, digital transport link will be available for both normal and emergency traffic on a prioritized basis. "Today's technology limits you to very small bit streams of information transferred from a public safety official in the field to someone else," explains Jorgensen. "Project MESA goes well beyond that and will do all of those things on a ubiquitous common basis, within the limitations of the actual system design and user requirements."

The uniqueness of the Project 25 process has been carried over to the Project MESA process. Both projects require a cross-cooperation between national governments, other public officials and the SDOs. "As was the case in Project 25, the first suite of standards for Project MESA are also being driven by the public safety users and their Statement of Requirements (SoR's)," comments Jorgensen "This time, however, the users are representative from public safety agencies in both Europe and the United States. To create these new standards that will allow companies to build new products to meet public safety's future needs, the Project MESA and other technical committees must overcome many challenges, including:

• Convincing key players to place public safety issues above or at least outside of traditional business interests.
• Gaining recognition of the importance of public safety communications technology on the part of the public official, public policy makers, and the general public.
• Convincing local communities to secure the long-term capital resources that are needed to implement this new technology.

The public safety community's migration to "Digital technology is a major change from the analog systems that we've used for the past 50-60 years," explains Jorgensen. "There needs to be a concerted effort to help people recognize that public safety systems are needed and we, as a society, have an obligation to fund and maintain those critical systems and services. Conversely, public safety communications managers, have an obligation to seek out greater cooperation between all levels of government and the private sector in an effort to acquire the most efficient and cost effective solutions available."⁵