The term "failsoft" refers to any failover condition that causes a digital trunked radio system to not trunk. This is most commonly caused by a loss of the control channel that subscriber radios use when communicating to the towers to assign a resource.
March 29, 2013
The APCO Project 25 (P25) Phase 2 standard is now ready for critical communications users. This further advancement of P25 was intended to improve upon the digital public safety radio communications standards used by first-responders, homeland security, emergency response professionals, and other agencies.
February 15, 2013
Raytheon's new Public Safety Regional Technology Center in Southern California provides an avenue for developing next-gen law enforcement technologies.
March 30, 2012
The UCLA Public Safety Network Systems Laboratory is dedicated to advancing public safety through a focus on the development of networks and operations technologies, analysis of LTE technologies, adoption of devices such as smartphones, and establishment of standards for interoperable network systems.
February 3, 2012
The devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan, as well as the ongoing nuclear power plant malfunctions there, serves as a grim reminder that similar disasters can occur here in the U.S. We need to better equip police officers, firefighters and other public safety personnel, so they can respond immediately and cohesively to emergency situations.
March 18, 2011
Once these decision-makers accept what field cops instinctively know — that smartphones are the future — public safety departments will move quickly to adopt technologies that already exist.
December 16, 2010
As systems integration shifts competition among handset manufacturers, we can also expect to see handset capabilities expand. Cell phones run circles around a police radio for about 5 percent of the cost.
April 13, 2010
Imagine a 10-officer team staking out a group of suspects from several locations simultaneously. Now, imagine the supervisor and team can observe each others' movements, simultaneously communicate via text message and call up a map of an entire building that suspects are about to enter.
February 4, 2010
I can't begin to count the times police and fire personnel have asked me why their cell phones have thousands of applications, yet their radios have none. The simple answer is that we, as public safety professionals, have not required it.
December 14, 2009
At a recent trade show, I spoke with many in law enforcement about reliance on radio towers for data systems. Based on my experience with radio systems in use by the military for more than a decade, I suggested we don't really need "towers" as public safety knows them today.
November 6, 2009