US Sets Up Emergency Multi-Band Radio Project 130
coondoggie writes "Looking to help eliminate the dangerous and inefficient hodgepodge of communication and network technology used by emergency response personnel, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today said it had picked 14 groups from across the country to pilot an ambitious Multi-Band Radio project.
In 2008, the DHS Science and Technology Directorate awarded a $6.2 million contract to Thales Communications to demonstrate the first-ever portable radio prototype that lets emergency responders — police, firefighters, emergency medical personnel and others — communicate with partner agencies, regardless of the radio band they operate on."
Oh god, no!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
The Department of Homeland Security only gives the kiss of death to public works projects. Here's what's going to happen; A bunch of committees will be called, and they're going to make a whole bunch of suggestions about what it "should" do. Each organization will want to have at least one feature included, a vote, etc. Tens (possibly hundreds) of millions will be lost doing this. It'll be filed under "R&D costs". At least a third of those suggestions will be crap or impossible/unfeasible to implement. It'll be recycled a few times on the General Schedule before some hapless corporation wins the contract. Then all hell breaks loose as delays in the project force reductions in scope, and the process of defining "core features" begins. By this point, everyone will be pointing fingers, and it'll be half-implemented and broken in many places. The project's surviving assets will be quietly transferred after a GAO inquiry regarding cost overruns and lack of deliverables -- just ahead of a congressional committee being called on the matter. Two years later, someone gets the idea that the US should have a multi-band radio project...
I only say this, because they've tried it with different scopes over [theregister.co.uk] and over [blogspot.com] and over [securitymanagement.com] and over [govtech.com] again. Their technology department is understaffed due to high turnover and leadership problems.
Fundamentally, these things never leave the pilot phase, or if they do, they face deployment problems because the requirements are so obtuse and ambitious that existing technology can't adapt. Even if it can, bureaucratic problems usually end a project before it sees wide-scale deployment due to reluctance to adopt new technology and failures in leadership -- namely, not communicating with people in the field before trying to put something there.
Re:Waiste Money on what has allready been done (Score:2, Interesting)
Because they have a budget. The last thing they want is a 'free' solution.
Going to people who are already doing it to ask for help / information is the among the last things a government bureaucrat would dare consider doing.
They want to pay someone to develop a technology for them. Preferably someone who has connections with them (hint hint).
Re:Hey while they're at it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Thales already makes and sells a multi-band SDR handheld called the Liberty. It costs $5k for the simple (no trunking) version.
Why the hell is our government giving a company money to develop something already being sold?
Really? (Score:2, Interesting)
Grenada (Score:3, Interesting)
The US Army and Navy had this problem...came to light during the Grenada invasion. If I remember correctly, a forward observer wound up calling in a naval artillery strike by phone via US operator because he couldn't reach the ship by radio. Might be apocryphal, but it rings true. That's when military radios became AN-PRC-77s, the AN standing for Army/Navy. Amazing it has taken the civilians another 25 years to even consider implementing this.
Re:Waiste Money on what has allready been done (Score:3, Interesting)
Ummm, no. Just because all radios use the same digital system doesn't mean there is a single point of failure. All the radios would have to fail. It's not like all the radios using one digital mode must communicate through one node.
Now, there IS a "single point" problem when you try to convert from simple radio systems to trunked, but "trunked" and "digital" are not synonyms.
There is nothing to be gained from "heterogeneity" other than confusion and expense. There is no advantage to a world where one communities police force uses P25 and the neighbors use something else, there is only time wasted trying to communicate when one needs help from the other. It is even worse if the police in a community use P25 and the fire department something else.